‘Where you come from shouldn’t dictate where you finish’: How Standard Chartered is taking on the banking industry’s class problem

Darren Ellis and his older brother were the first in their family to go to university.

It didn’t take him long to notice that many of his classmates came from very different backgrounds.

“If it wasn’t for the fact I played sport at a high level, I’m not sure I would have had the confidence to interact with the people on my course,” says Ellis, now Standard Chartered’s chief financial officer for Europe, the Americas, Africa, and the Middle East.

“Other people won’t have that.” His mum worked in a school kitchen, his dad in a factory.

He understood the value of money from an early age.

“If I broke something, it did not get replaced,” he says.

It left him with a firm belief in effort.

“Hard work is the bedrock of everything that we do.

People who work hard should be given the opportunity,” he adds.

Standard Chartered ranks No.

84 on the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For–Europe 2026 list.

Since taking over as U.K. chair of its socioeconomic mobility working group in January 2026, Ellis has encouraged the bank to treat class background with the same rigor it applies to gender or ethnicity.

“Where you come from shouldn’t dictate where you finish,” he says.

In the U.K. financial services sector, employees from lower-income backgrounds take 16% longer than peers from higher socioeconomic backgrounds to reach senior roles, according to 2025 research by the Bridge Group and Progress Together , and only 26% of senior leaders come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.