How Standard Chartered is taking over the banking trade’s class drawback
Darren Ellis and his older brother have been the primary of their household to go to school. It didn’t take him lengthy to note that a lot of his classmates got here from very totally different backgrounds.
“If it wasn’t for the very fact I performed sport at a excessive degree, I’m unsure I’d have had the arrogance to work together with the folks on my course,” says Ellis, now Standard Chartered’s chief monetary officer for Europe, Americas, Africa and Middle East. “Other folks received’t have that.”
His mum labored in a college kitchen, his dad in a manufacturing unit. He understood the worth of cash from an early age. “If I broke one thing, it didn’t get changed,” he says. It left him with a agency perception in effort. “Hard work is the bedrock of every part that we do. People who work arduous ought to be given the chance,” he provides.
Standard Chartered ranks 84th on Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work for — Europe 2026 listing. Since taking on as U.Okay. chair of its socio-economic mobility working group in January 2026, Ellis has inspired the financial institution to deal with class background with the identical rigor because it applies to gender or ethnicity. “Where you come from shouldn’t dictate the place you end,” he says.
In the U.Okay. monetary providers sector, workers from lower-income backgrounds take 16% longer than friends from larger socio-economic backgrounds to achieve senior roles, based on 2025 analysis by the Bridge Group and Progress Together, and solely 26% of senior leaders come from decrease socio-economic backgrounds. This is regardless of the City of London’s socio-economic variety taskforce setting a goal for half of senior leaders to return from working-class or non-professional backgrounds by 2030.
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Standard chartered’s rank on fortune 100 best companies to work for — europe
People from decrease socio-economic backgrounds face quite a few limitations to beginning a profession in finance, based on Ellis. Many alternatives are marketed on-line and thru skilled networks that individuals from lower-income houses are much less prone to be in, he says. “First of all, you need to know that the chance is there. Then you’ve acquired to have the arrogance to place your self ahead.”
One of the challenges companies face is a scarcity of knowledge. Unlike gender pay gaps, there is no such thing as a socio-economic background reporting requirement for U.Okay. employers, and solely 15% ask concerning the class background of workers’ dad and mom, based on the Sutton Trust. In 2024, Standard Chartered began polling workers on their backgrounds to get a greater understanding of socio-economic variety inside the corporate affairs.
Disclosure has risen from slightly below 25% in the beginning of this yr to 31%, with a goal to achieve 50% by 2028. External consultants have helped redesign how the financial institution encourages folks to reveal, simplifying the method and constructing belief that the knowledge received’t be used towards them. Ellis and different senior leaders have shared their very own backgrounds on the financial institution’s intranet and weblog to make others really feel extra comfy discussing their upbringing.
“If you attempt to create most affect to start out with, with out understanding the info or creating consciousness, you run the chance of not attaining an amazing deal,” Ellis says.
The group additionally runs quarterly listening classes the place employees speak concerning the limitations they face. These classes have helped Ellis develop a greater understanding of the challenges others have overcome. “We have unbelievably gifted individuals who have accomplished unimaginable issues to get the place they’ve gotten to,” he says. “But they nonetheless don’t really feel like they essentially have the arrogance or the alternatives that others do.”
Those classes led on to a expertise development program, launched in June 2026, for high-potential workers from lower-income backgrounds. Each of the ten individuals has been paired with a senior managing director as their sponsor, to present them advocacy, visibility, and entry to roles they may in any other case miss.
The financial institution can be working additional up the pipeline. Its Spring insights program, a three-day, in-person workshop permits first-year college college students to realize expertise of working in Standard Chartered’s company and funding financial institution. Last yr it introduced 50 college students from underrepresented backgrounds to its workplaces within the U.Okay. and U.S., and 10 of them went on to summer time internships.
Standard Chartered has additionally partnered with HSBC to run a colleges outreach scheme, which can begin within the first quarter of 2027. The initiative goals to demystify finance and present college students function fashions from totally different backgrounds. “Naturally we [HSBC and Standard Chartered] are opponents,” Ellis says. “But on this, the competitors goes out the window. Working collectively creates many extra alternatives for younger folks.”
Standard Chartered additionally works with Progress Together, the trade physique based in 2022. For the primary time, three of the ten program individuals will be a part of its cross-company sponsorship scheme, every sponsored by a senior chief at one other agency. “I’m more than pleased to have the dialog with anybody who desires to work with us that can assist advance the agenda,” Ellis says.
Cultural and societal variations can even signify a problem for world companies when making an attempt to evaluate socio-economic variety. In the U.Okay. and U.S., gathering knowledge on workers’ dad and mom’ jobs once they have been kids is repeatedly used as an indicator of socio-economic background. However, in India there’s much less of a hyperlink.
“We can’t take what we’ve accomplished within the U.Okay. and the U.S. and use that in India,” Ellis says. The financial institution is being guided by its Indian workforce within the design of its native program.
Buy in from senior management can be necessary. “If you wish to make any kind of significant progress then you definitely want robust sponsorship on the bottom,” Ellis says. “Senior leaders play a crucial function in driving visibility, constructing momentum, and finally demonstrating that socio-economic mobility issues, and it issues to the group.”
Alex Mason, CEO of Standard Chartered’s innovation arm SC Ventures, and Paul Day, world chief inner auditor, turned joint world sponsors for the financial institution’s social mobility program final yr.
For different corporations looking for to enhance socio-economic mobility, Ellis advises accumulating knowledge and enhancing consciousness first earlier than introducing new schemes. Token efforts, he warns, can go away workers from decrease socio-economic backgrounds feeling extra shut out than earlier than.
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