Starling Bank is proud to announce that its chief executive Anne Boden has received an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list for services to fintech London
Anne Boden is a banker breaking the mould. After a distinguished career working in senior leadership at some of the world’s best-known financial heavyweights, among them Allied Irish Banks, Royal Bank of Scotland and ABN AMRO she set out to build her own mobile bank from scratch in 2014. She raised $70 million of funding and obtained a full banking licence in 2016, launching Starling’s first account in 2017. Less than a year later, in January 2018, Starling was voted Best British Bank by the consumer review website Smart Money People.
The idea for Starling came to Anne in 2012. A computer scientist by training, she saw earlier than others in the industry the potential for digital technology to revolutionise the way ordinary people do their banking.
With the team at Starling, Anne, 58, set out to build an app to help customers manage their finances in real-time, all from one app. A principal aim was to take away some of the anxiety associated with day-to-day money management by making it easier for customers to manage their cash flow, track their income and spending.
To get Starling off the ground, she had to break through bureaucracy and process, in-built prejudices and widespread scepticism. Today, Starling is a fast-growing fintech (financial technology) company, with a full banking license, offering mobile accounts to individual and business customers and employing a team of 180 people.