Starling boss Anne Boden gets gong

The digital bank’s founder has been awarded an MBE for services to financial technology.

One field in which Starling Bank can now claim a clear lead over its competitors: decorations for founders.

On Friday, we learned that Anne Boden (pictured), founder and chief executive officer of Starling Bank, has been awarded an MBE for services to financial technology, as part of the Queen’s Birthday Honours list.

TechCrunch’s Steve O’Hear first tweeted the news. Boden herself tweeted in reaction to the award on Saturday.

So humbled by your congrats this morning #BirthdayHonours #MBE , really relieved it wasn't a parking ticket @KGriffithsTimes, and so proud to be working with the women & men @StarlingBank (thank you) to take the stress out of people's financial lives. #MakeMoneyEqual #fintech pic.twitter.com/lSCpU09ZTj

— Anne Boden (@AnneBoden) 9 June 2018

Hope remains for the likes of Tom Blomfield (Monzo) and Nikolay Storonsky (Revolut), should they happen to care about such distinctions.

In the peer-to-peer lending sector – which is a few years older than digital banking – pioneers Giles Andrews (Zopa) and Samir Desai (Funding Circle) were awarded an OBE and CBE respectively, back in 2015. Rhydian Lewis, co-founder and chief executive of RateSetter (the third member of the P2P ‘big three’, alongside Zopa and Funding Circle), was eventually given an OBE as well, but had to wait until June 2017.