Starling launches AI assistant for small business customers

Starling Bank has launched an AI assistant for business customers, available in the bank's app at no extra charge.

Called Starling Assistant, the product targets small businesses and is designed to help users manage routine financial tasks, review transactions, and spot possible scams. It follows the launch of a similar assistant for personal account holders earlier this year.

One of the first functions is a tax ring-fencing feature that lets users give instructions such as setting aside part of the previous month's earnings for VAT. The assistant calculates the amount from account history and moves the money into a separate Space within the app.

Another feature targets invoice fraud, which continues to affect smaller companies. Business users can ask the assistant about supplier invoices, and it will flag possible warning signs, including changes to payment details, and suggest steps such as checking directly with the company involved.

UK Finance has estimated that invoice fraud cost businesses more than £41 million in 2025. That puts banks and finance software providers under pressure to show that new digital tools can help customers identify risks before money leaves an account.

Tax and admin

The assistant also includes a tool for sole traders and landlords dealing with Making Tax Digital for Income Tax. It asks users about income levels and tells them when they are likely to fall within the rules, while directing them to the relevant HMRC processes.

The service is intended to reduce manual administration for small firms, which often handle bookkeeping, tax preparation and payment checks without dedicated finance teams. Customers must opt in before using the assistant.

Later this year, Starling plans to add receipt analysis, allowing business customers to ask the assistant to summarise spending in specific categories based on uploaded receipts and transaction records. It also intends to connect the assistant to its accounting software so users can create and send invoices through the tool.

The assistant uses Google Gemini on Google Cloud, according to the bank. Customer data remains within Starling's own cloud environment and is not used to train models.

"We know that managing finances can be a major drain on time for small businesses. Starling Assistant changes this by automating routine tasks and taking the guesswork out of money management. We're committed to boosting SME productivity, as Starling's own research shows that if more small businesses adopted digital financial tools their growth could add £25.3bn to the UK economy," Harriet Rees, Group Chief Information Officer at Starling, said.

The launch reflects a wider push by banks to build generative AI tools into consumer and business products, moving beyond chat-style support to software that can carry out actions on behalf of users within controlled systems. For business banking providers, the appeal is that repetitive tasks such as moving funds, checking invoices and categorising spending are easier to standardise than more complex advisory work.

Small business owners have become a key target for these products because they often combine operational, sales and finance duties in a single role. That creates demand for tools that can reduce time spent on back-office work without requiring companies to adopt separate systems for every function.

Starling has been expanding its business banking offering as digital challengers and established lenders compete for smaller companies. In that market, fraud prevention and cash management are increasingly central selling points, especially as customers expect banking apps to handle more of the work once managed by accountants or manual spreadsheets.

Business customers will also be able to request new tools for the assistant from within the app.