Starling chief quits bank as profits jump

The boss of challenger bank Starling is stepping down nine years after founding it.

Anne Boden, the first British woman to start a new bank, said she would relinquish the role of chief executive at the end of next month.

She will remain on the board as a non-executive director as well as a shareholder with a 4.9pc stake worth £122.5m.

Boden also highlighted her ambition for the company she founded in 2014 to float on the stock market – predicted to happen within two years.

‘Starling is bigger than just one person. It is a piece of infrastructure that is important to the UK. We provide a real role in society,’ she said.

She said it was not appropriate’ to have a shareholder as chief executive, due to potential conflicts of interest.

Chief operating officer John Mountain will fill the role until a replacement is appointed. Starling reported a record profit of £195m for the year to the end of March – more than six times the previous year’s £32m. revenues ballooned to £453m from £216m as it cashed in on rising interest rates.

As a digital-only bank, it has no branches and allows customers to run accounts on their phones. It has over 3.6m accounts and a funding round last year valued it at £2.5bn. Boden, 63, set it up after the 2008 financial crisis.

She told the BBC: ‘I was ashamed to be part of that whole regime that had let the country down. I wanted to found a bank that was really good for customers, that was fair. And people never believed I could do it and be profitable. So here we are, we’ve done it.’