Starling Bank has grown into one of the UK’s leading digital banks, serving more than 4.2 million customers, and holding £12.9 billion in deposits, supported by £301.1 million in pre-tax profit in 2024. As the bank scaled its Banking-as-a-Service offering and deepened its SME proposition, it identified three critical leadership gaps across its payments function. The organisation required senior operators who could work within a technically sophisticated environment, carry commercial accountability, and steer regulatory and scheme engagements across a rapidly evolving payments landscape.
Three mandates emerged as essential to the next phase of growth. The Director of Payments needed to take full ownership of Starling’s payments strategy, leading regulatory oversight, scheme compliance across PSD2, PSD3, Bacs and Faster Payments, and driving innovation across all UK payment rails. The Head of FX & Propositions required end-to-end responsibility for the bank’s customer FX business, including P&L management across retail and SME, pricing strategy and the development of propositions that could meet commercial targets. The Payments Acceptance Owner was tasked with building Starling’s acceptance capabilities for solopreneurs, microbusinesses, and SMEs, working across Technology, Product, Risk, Operations and Compliance while holding first line risk ownership.
This cluster of roles illustrated the interconnected nature of Starling’s payments ecosystem. Without leadership across these three pillars: core payment rails, FX revenue growth, and SME acceptance, the bank could not scale its infrastructure or deliver the seamless experience expected of a modern digital bank.
Savannah designed an integrated search programme to cover all three mandates simultaneously, ensuring alignment across technical requirements, commercial expectations, and leadership capability. The work was led by a specialist financial services and fintech partner with deep payments expertise, enabling the team to decode the nuances of Starling’s strategy, regulatory environment and technology stack, including the bank’s proprietary “Engine by Starling ” platform and its planned expansion into the United States.
The search strategy combined targeted network engagement, in-depth industry outreach and market-wide mapping across payments, fintech, international FX, card schemes, processors, and adjacencies such as embedded finance. This approach ensured the searches extended beyond traditional banking talent pools, reflecting Starling’s desire for leaders who could bring new thinking and challenge established norms within the payments ecosystem.
Talent Intelligence was used to complement this work by providing a clear view of the competitive market. The platform mapped the universe of relevant payments and FX leaders, benchmarked role structures against peer organisations, and surfaced candidates with diverse career trajectories and under-represented backgrounds. This ensured diversity and breadth of experience were embedded into the search from the outset, rather than added as a secondary filter. The combined methodology delivered a curated, insight led shortlist for each role, giving Starling complete visibility of the market before appointing.
Savannah successfully appointed three leaders who collectively strengthened Starling’s payments architecture. Ruwani Hewa joined as Director of Payments from Nuapay (GoCardless), bringing deep experience across account-to account payments, open banking and embedded finance, alongside earlier leadership roles at American Express, Barclaycard, Collinson, and Amadeus. Her remit includes leading the relaunch of Starling Banking Services and ensuring regulated firms can access UK payment rails through the bank’ s infrastructure.
Luke Jordan became Head of FX & Propositions, bringing an unconventional blend of fintech entrepreneurship, international development, and strategic consulting experience. His background includes leading new product initiatives at Taptap Send, founding Grassroot, a civic technology platform that scaled to more than 2.5 million users, and earlier work at the World Bank and McKinsey. At Starling, he leads FX P&L across retail and SME, shaping pricing, partnerships, and proposition development.
Manish Kumar joined as Payments Acceptance Owner following more than twenty years of global experience across B2B and B2C product innovation, revenue leadership and fintech scaling across Europe, North America, and Asia-Pacific. His role at Starling centres on building SME acceptance capabilities, ensuring commercial viability, regulatory alignment, and operational robustness.
Together, these appointments delivered a leadership cohort with complementary strengths across payments infrastructure, FX strategy, and SME acceptance, while also bringing diversity across gender, ethnicity, and career path. The result is a payments leadership team equipped to support Starling ’ s growth, enhance resilience across its core functions and help the bank compete with the agility expected of a modern digital challenger.
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