By Oliver Smith on Friday 8 March 2019
Not a traditional high street bank in sight.
Last night at a glitzy ceremony in the heart of London’s Piccadilly, a new breed of digital challengers swiped a host of trophies at the annual British Bank Awards.
Starling Bank took home a trio of awards, including the coveted Best British Bank award for the second year running, with a customer satisfaction rate of 98.6%, edging out in front of Monzo by just 0.2% and long-time winners First Direct by 0.4%.
"Winning these awards is recognition of the hard work of the Starling team; it also reflects the enthusiasm of our customers to drive long term and meaningful change in banking. We are thrilled to win these awards and grateful to the customers who voted for us," said Anne Boden founder and chief executive of Starling Bank.
Best Business Banking Provider and Best Current Account Provider were also both scooped by Boden’s bank.
It wasn’t all bad news for Tom Blomfield’s Monzo however, the bank bagged the award for Best Banking App 2019, a heavily-contested award between Coconut, Monese, NatWest, Starling and Barclays.
Maybe the most surprising award of the night went to Freetrade. The commission-free share investing app, after just five months of operation, last night beat multi-billion dollar rival Hargreaves Lansdown to be named Best Share Trading Platform.
Zopa was named Best Personal Loan Provider for the third year running, Chip won Best Personal Finance App, and Bud took home The Pioneer Award for its work on Open Banking. 11:FS was named Consultancy Of The Year for its work on Mettle, the newly launched SME digital bank of RBS.
Traditional banks were largely wiped from the rankings with only Virgin Money, now owned by CYBG, winning Best Credit Card Provider. Last year NatWest and HSBC took home awards, however this year didn’t secure any.
The British Bank Awards are voted on by some 27,000 customers of the banks, who are surveyed on their experiences.
Our congratulations to these and all of the winners, who can be found here.
