Anne Boden

Anne Boden was born in 1960 in Swansea, the daughter of a steelworker and a department store worker, and studied chemistry and computer science at Swansea University. She joined Lloyds Bank as a graduate trainee in 1981, when the branch computer was a novelty, and spent the next three decades in banking: at Standard Chartered, UBS, ABN Amro, RBS after the 2008 crash, and in 2012 as chief operating officer of Allied Irish Banks in Dublin, helping to rebuild after the bailout.

That last job convinced her that the technology inside banks was decades out of date and that nobody in charge intended to change it. In 2014, aged 54, she left to build a bank that would exist only on a phone. Investors were sceptical of a middle-aged woman with no start-up background pitching a plan to take on the high street, and she was told repeatedly that the idea was fine but she was the wrong person to lead it. In 2015 her young chief technology officer, Tom Blomfield, left with most of the team and founded Monzo.

She kept going alone, borrowing to pay the bills. In January 2016 she secured 48 million pounds from a Bahamas-based investor, Harald McPike, and in July the Bank of England granted the licence. Starling opened accounts in 2017, reached profitability in 2020, and by the time she stepped down as chief executive in 2023 had over three million customers.

She wrote a book about it, Banking On It, in which she describes the loneliness of the early years without varnish. She was appointed MBE in 2018.