Anne Boden is Starling’s CEO and founder with the experiences in the financial world only a few have. She worked for several of the big banks, including Lloyds, Standard Chartered, and RBS.
But then she has seen the opportunity of starting a new bank called Starling. As she comes from Wales, Starling remains locally patriotic with having a huge part of its offices in Cardiff. She gave a huge interview to Altfi from which we have brought to you the most important parts.
Read also: World Fintech Report 2020 – Banks have to transform into “Inventive banks”
With regard to the coronavirus crisis, Boden is sure this will bring the demise of cash money. But she is also aware that this doesn’t just bring benefits as it comes with other challenges.
Boden told AltFi: “I think this current crisis will speed up certain changes in social trends that are happening and before you know it, I think paper money will largely disappear in the next couple of years, as people are not taking that cash out of the ATM.”
She is also clearly sceptical of the fututure of bank branches.
“I don’t think there’s any going back now to branches. I think that people don’t want that face-to-face contact, people have got used to having contact on a browser on your phone.”
She asumes that digital baking has a bright future, since traditional banks were not able to embrace the digital revolution fully and now will strugggle with their whole structure that doesn’t fit to the needs of customers who got used to a lockdown conditions.
She also believes that coronavirus will help determine London’s position as a fintech hub.
“Things are moving very fast and changes that are already underway will be picked up. The biggest challengers to London are Berlin and Paris but I don’t think they have enough fintech-traction to take the lead away from London at the moment,” she added.
Related: N26 shuts down in the UK! Brexit is to blame
With this claim, it is true that continental fintechs have struggled in the UK (N26 left UK market citing Brexit), but UK fintechs have better position in some EU countries than the local companies.
