‘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, Americas, Africa and 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 84th on Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work for — Europe 2026 list. Since taking over as U.K. chair of its socio-economic mobility working group in January 2026, Ellis has encouraged the bank to treat class background with the same rigor as 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 socio-economic 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 socio-economic backgrounds. This is despite the City of London’s socio-economic diversity taskforce setting a target for half of senior leaders to come from working-class or non-professional backgrounds by 2030.  

84Standard chartered’s rank on fortune 100 best companies to work for — europe

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