Standard Chartered Bank partnered with Starling Bank to introduce a new product that will help consumers to invest in green projects through the banking-as-a-service (BaaS) platform.
Utilise Starling’s BaaS platform for the new service, Shoal
Standard Chartered introduced the Shoal platform powered by Starling Bank to enable the customers to select and invest in renewable energy, clean water, and community development. Once a consumer selects a category, the customers’ money will then be used to fund such a project. Users will receive regular updates on the projects they have invested in and will get a "competitive" rate of return.
Shoal will be used exclusively for green and sustainable projects. It will be initially available as an app before expanding the services into Starling Marketplace in the future.
Bill Winters, CEO at Standard Chartered Bank said, “Our vision is to become the world’s most sustainable and responsible bank. While we looked to the COP26 conference to accelerate government action, our partnership with Starling Bank is an example of the private sector taking decisive steps to scale climate investment”.
"With Shoal, we’re excited to build a platform that will unlock the much-needed retail capital to fund sustainable projects in parts of the world where the impact will be greatest. It provides savers the power to make good money, while making money do good".
Anne Boden, founder and CEO of Starling Bank said, “We are pleased to deploy Starling Bank’s BaaS proposition in partnership with Standard Chartered to help their customers live ever more sustainably. Starling will handle the technical and regulatory demands behind the scenes, leaving Shoal to take care of the customers”.
In UK, more than one-fifth of the domestic investors are planning to invest in dedicated ethical funds with the ratio emerging to more than one-third among individuals aged 35 and below.
The new platform funded by SC Ventures, the innovation arm of Standard Chartered Bank will be launched with a cash savings account.
Standard Chartered said Shoal will enable customers to invest exclusively in green and sustainable projects and will give them the power to select the type of projects their money would support. Standard Chartered plans to expand Shoal in Europe.
Recently, Starling Bank launched the latest feature, bills manager that enables customers to make specific recurring bills payments from savings, apart from their primary account.
The customers can access the bills manager feature by going to the ‘savings space’ and selecting the ‘manage space’ option to pay their bills.
Alex Manson, head of SC Ventures said, “With Shoal, we are creating a new venture to address the growing need of retail clients for sustainable financial and non-financial products, starting with UK and expanding to other markets over time”.
“Starling’s BaaS proposition has enabled Shoal to develop and build a product at scale and speed. Using Starling’s technology and application programming interfaces (APIs), payments can be made instantly into sustainable savings funds with Shoal,” Standard Chartered said.
Starling Bank obtained approval from regulators and the new Shoal platform has met the regulatory requirements. All of the accounts will be protected by the financial services compensation scheme.
“This model enables Shoal to focus on customer acquisition and service and delivers a front-end app with a superior user experience while Starling ‘powers’ the overall solution,” Standard Chartered said.