Challenger Banker: Starling Bank CEO Anne Boden

Barefoot Innovation Podcast

There are a lot of very rare things about my guest today, Anne Boden.

She is one of a very small group of people who have founded what the U.K. calls challenger banks – banks that were chartered after the financial crisis as part of regulators’ newly minted mandate to foster competition in the financial sector.

She is one of the very small group of bank CEOs, worldwide, who are women – which makes her a great guest for an episode that we recorded at the end of March – which was Women’s History Month.

She is the CEO of a startup that turns a profit. Many don’t.

She is one of a very small group of bank CEOs whose roots are in technology, not banking. Her university degree was in chemistry and computer science.

And she is the very rare bank CEO who has written a New York Times bestseller. Titled, Banking on it: How I Disrupted the Way We Manage Our Money Forever, her book recounts the amazing story of how Anne – then a senior executive at a global bank, in her mid-50’s – decided to found, yes, a bank.