What can Starling learn from Octopus?

What can Starling learn from Octopus?

If the underdog can offer a better experience, it can take on an established industry, and win.

I’m a customer of Starling - the young bank. From opening an account to tracking spending, it is refreshingly excellent. It cast my other banks in an unflattering light. Their flaws were suddenly in sharp relief. Starling raised my expectations. They set the bar higher.

You’d expect the big banks to react. To use their vast resources to copy the upstart’s features and neutralise the threat. It sounds so obvious. But they haven’t. And more importantly, they probably can’t.

Do you know Built for Mars? Check out the glorious UX design deep dives. His UX of Banking makes it plain to see. Not only are the big banks not catching up, but they are falling further behind Starling and the others.

Octopus Energy did the same thing in energy. They entered a market full of analogue incumbents with poor customer service and used tech to do better. Their next play was to sell the operating system behind all that great UX to other energy suppliers. They’re an energy company but also a software company.

The lesson for Starling? You can be a tech company that does banking, but most banks can't learn to be tech companies. They’ve built a better bank. And now they should follow the Octopus playbook and sell the OS.