Starling bank can invest either in Germany, the United States or India. To make this decision, the Company should utilize the Simple, Multi, Attribute, and Rating Technique (SMART). This approach will enable Starling bank decision makers to consider multiple objectives, evaluate the opportunities of tradeoffs with other alternatives and incorporate numbers to establish a country that is most suitable for business expansion.

The first stage will be to identify the objective of venturing in either of the countries. The second step will be to identify possible outcomes of the business expansion and third will be to identify different attributes that are significant in expansion decision (Aharoni, Tihanyi, and Connelly, 2011). All the attributes identified need to be assigned a value to establish the suitability of the attribute in achieving the identified objective. The next step will be to relate the weight of each attribute with the decision maker. This is aimed at establishing how the decision maker perceives each attribute and how suitable do they feel each attribute is in achieving the objective. The next stage will be to apply a weighted average of each of the attributes to each alternative. This will be proceeded by a provisional decision and a sensitivity analysis that will put numbers into account to determine how suitable a decision is.

In this case, the objective of the sensitivity analysis is to identify a suitable market for export. The expected outcome for this is to facilitate business growth thereby increasing profits. Before selecting the relevant attributes, it will be necessary to evaluate the company and its products. The UK based digital bank was established by Anne Boden who had previously worked for Allied Irish banks and Global Transaction Banking. The bank offers debit MasterCard and mobile apps. Before deciding on whether to export the products to the U.S, Germany or India, it will be important to understand different aspects of the banking sector of each country.

Germany.

Germany has an infrastructure that is non-discriminatory and well developed financial services (Gov., 2018). The financial system is bank based, and one of the products that are on high demand is loans because banks are a source of funding for many small and medium-sized firms.  The country has approximately more than 36,000 bank offices which offer loans, allow deposits and trade in the securities. The reason why the system is nondiscriminatory is that it allows both foreign and domestic investors to obtain credit from different banks. In Germany, there is no deficiency of the credit.

The industry is highly surplus evidenced by several ongoing consolidations and low profits for the institutions (Gov., 2018). The banking system for the country consists of private banks, public banks as well as cooperative banks. The reason why the institutions are not making substantial profits is because of the high cost of the operating structures, the low-interest rates and the compliance costs that arise due to the strict government regulation and supervision.

Fifty percent of the bank in Germany are those owned by the state as well as local government (Gov., 2018). On the other hand, private banks control 0 percent, and twenty percent is made up of cooperative banks. Consumers obtain services such as mortgages, guarantees, and finances projects for the marginalized regions in different regions. The State banks especially KfW also offers financing services for projects in developing countries. Some of the banks have subsidiaries in the United States, and the services are compatible between the two countries because the German Government does not impose restrictions that bar movement of foreign exchange and dividends and capital.

Reference List

Aharoni, Y., Tihanyi, L. and Connelly, B.L., 2011. Managerial decision-making in international business: A forty-five-year retrospective. Journal of World Business, 46(2), pp.135-142.

Gov., E. (2018). Germany – Banking Systems | export.gov. [Online] Export.gov. Available at: https://www.export.gov/article?id=Germany-Banking-Systems [Accessed 16 Apr. 2019].