Outcomes at a glance

4 continents: Engine has sold to banks across four continents, supported by PwC’s deep industry expertise and global network.

12-month accelerated delivery: From idea to outcome, implementation into new banks takes just 12 months.

1 team: PwC UK and Starling teams working as one—founding a new company to help revolutionise banking.

10-year partnership: A decade of working together, helping Starling continuously reinvent.

Forces that drove change

Traditional banks are under increasing pressure to evolve. Customers expect seamless, digital-first experiences—fast, affordable, and sustainable. But legacy systems and high operational costs slow banks down, and siloed product lines create inefficiencies that make it difficult to deliver the streamlined services today’s market demands.

Starling Bank and PwC UK saw the opportunity early. Launched in 2017 as Britain’s first digital bank, within six years Starling had captured 9% of the small-and-medium-business banking market, empowering millions of customers to realise their financial goals.

The key to Starling’s success? Engine—their single, cloud-native banking platform, built entirely in-house. Engine provides everything needed to run a feature-rich, cost-effective digital bank, offering customers greater access and control while driving down operational costs.

Early on, PwC UK and Starling recognised Engine’s potential appeal across the industry. Many banks attempt to build their own digital solutions, only to find they need multiple systems to achieve what Engine delivers in one. Starling partnered with PwC, drawing on deep industry expertise and regulatory guidance, to reimagine the possibilities. At its core, this was reinvention—expanding from banking to launching a Software as a Service (SaaS) business.

How PwC made things happen

To seize the opportunity, this initiative needed focus, autonomy, and speed. Starling created a separate company with its own leadership and board, naming it Engine by Starling—a singular ‘North Star’ driving clarity of purpose and progress at every stage. PwC committed to a strategic partnership, bringing ingenuity, banking expertise, and leading-edge technology to the equation.

The new company built its team purposefully, prioritising tech expertise from the start. “Digital transformations often fail because the culture says change is a risk,” explains Sam Everington, Engine by Starling’s CEO. “We didn’t just make bankers run a tech company—we let people do what they were best at and strengthened governance at the board level by hiring more people with tech backgrounds.” The result? A company driven by innovation.

The Engine platform itself is built for speed and scale. Modular, API-based, and cloud-native, it gives financial services organisations everything needed to launch digital banking propositions fast—or modernise existing systems seamlessly.

Taking this SaaS solution to market meant embracing a culture of change and iteration. “Other banks might make two or three platform changes a year. The Engine team is used to doing 30 to 40 a day. This creates a flywheel in the organisation where curiosity leads to action—if something doesn’t work, you can dial it back. If it works, you keep going. This is very different from how traditional banks operate,” explains Steve Davies, Partner, PwC UK.

How PwC helped deliver outcomes

Engine now operates on four continents. PwC partners with Engine by Starling to roll out the platform worldwide, typically completing each client project in 12 months. Speed to market and execution have become a hallmark of the partnership.

One example: AMP Bank in Australia—where Starling’s technology, delivered through Engine, is powering a new digital proposition built specifically for small business owners. It’s the kind of outcome the partnership was built to deliver, at pace and at scale.

We have big aspirations with Engine. We have a shared business plan, a formal alliance, and a team that has been training on how to use and implement the platform.

Alex Price,
Director, Customer Strategy and Experience, PwC UK

Partnering with PwC has been crucial in helping to deliver Engine, our leading  digital banking platform, to customers around the world. PwC combines an incredible breadth of strategic knowledge with hands-on experience.

Sam Everington,
CEO, Engine by Starling

Engine’s ambition is to eventually be bigger than Starling Bank—becoming the digital powerhouse behind banks around the world.

This is really the latest in a series of reinvention stories here. These guys are serial inventors. If you go back to the original retail bank, that was a reinvention of banking. If you look at what they’re doing today, they’re reinventing digital banking software.

Steve Davies,
Partner, PwC UK

Engine by Starling proves that reinventing business models can unlock long-term value and growth—and that bold ambition, deep expertise, and the right technology can drive progress at scale.

Turn insight into action

Four priorities for reinvention:

1. Find your North Star. Identify your organisation’s singular vision. A ‘North Star’ rallies teams to champion a common cause.
2. Embrace iteration. Reinvention means change. Some changes will work. Some won’t. When something fails, use it as an opportunity to learn and improve.
3. Build trusted partnerships. Trust is key to building strong, collaborative, long-term relationships.
4. Lead with people. Power with tech. Technology is only part of the solution. Culture is critical to powering change. Create an environment where people are empowered to do what they do best.