Starling calls for Lord Agnew to retract loan fraud criticism

Agnew’s ire was particularly directed towards Starling Bank, who he accused of behaving “against the government and taxpayers’ interests” due to what he saw as its failures in counter-fraud responsibilities on the £47bn bounce back loan programme.  

The programme saw the government provide 1.6 million loans underwritten by the taxpayer. Borrowers had to self-attest their 2019 turnover, and a mass of fraudulent activity has since been uncovered.

He said Starling was “one of the worst when it came to validating the turnover of businesses or submitting suspicious activity reports” at an anti-fraud event.

He continued, “Being new on the block most of their applicants were not already customers and so any reasonable institution would have been doubly careful before pouring the money out of the door. But the opposite happened.”

Agnew further alleged the bank used the scheme to buoy its “balance sheet by a factor of 50 times in barely less than a year, with no risk to themselves and 100 per cent risk to the taxpayer”.

The bank contacted the organisers to request they do not “distribute a film of Lord Agnew’s comments because they are factually incorrect and wrongly represent us,” according to The Times.

Anne Boden, founder and chief executive of Starling, said she was “shocked” by the comments and demanded Agnew withdraw his claims, the publication reported.

Agnew reportedly responded “I have no plans to withdraw my comments until I can see some data that puts my mind to rest,” and he has submitted questions about the lender’s performance during the scheme.

A Starling spokeswoman told The Times: “We are meeting with him imminently to discuss his observations. We hope that once we’ve met with him, he will understand that the comments he made about us are factually incorrect and that he will withdraw his remarks.”

Credit Strategy has contacted Starling for comment.