By Lars Mucklejohn The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has fined digital challenger bank Starling £28.96m for failings related to its financial crime controls, which the City regulator called “shockingly lax”. The FCA said on Wednesday that Starling’s financial crime measures “did not keep pace” with its growing customer base – which surged from 43,000 in 2017 to 3.6m in 2023. Starling, founded in 2014, failed to comply with an FCA requirement restricting its opening of new accounts for “high-risk customers”, the regulator said. The FCA found the bank had opened more than 54,000 accounts for…