Starling Bank introduces AI-powered smart tools for chatbot

Starling Bank has launched “smart tools,” a new suite of artificial intelligence capabilities integrated into its Starling Assistant chatbot. These tools are designed to help customers manage their finances more effectively through specialized AI skills.

According to Frédéric Laurent, deputy chief information officer at Starling Bank, the initiative aims to release new tools weekly. Initial features include personalized savings plans, scam guidance, automated VAT savings, and support for Making Tax Digital. The bank’s approach has evolved alongside AI advancements, moving from natural language processing for spending insights to multi-modal capabilities for fraud detection, such as “Scam Intelligence,” which analyzes images for red flags.

The concept of “skills”—encoding specific tasks for an AI model to perform through a series of steps—was inspired by how the bank’s internal software engineers use AI coding agents. Starling Bank plans to continue scaling these AI applications across both internal operations and customer-facing services.