Up the revolution!

Digital banking trailblazer Anne Boden’s new book is a rallying cry to the common people – the ordinary account holders, modest savers and amateur speculators – to ‘pick up your apps and march!’ Alastair Paterson joins them

It may have borrowed its distinctive brand colour of teal for the jacket, but Anne Boden’s new book The Money Revolution: Easy Ways To Manage Your Finances In A Digital World is not an advert for her Starling Bank (well, not overtly).

Instead, it’s an examination of some of the most exciting companies in the wonderful world of fintech, and how they can affect (wait for it)… people outside the M25.

The topic of financial inclusion is a broad one. In years gone by, the only option for opening a bank account was walking into a branch on the high street.

Starling and others have changed that emphatically and forever, but what about other aspects of financial services? Where can you get a mortgage if not from your high street bank? Where can those lucky enough to have the cash to invest find something other than a higher interest bank account advertised on ITV?

If you are holding this magazine, chances are that you are aware of the hundreds of fintech firms, all tackling the variety of needs in the market, both directly and indirectly; but for the intended audience of The Money Revolution, that’s not the case.

Ordinary consumers’ lack of awareness could restrict their choices of what’s available. What this book aims to do is highlight that, for every need a consumer has out there – the desire to check their credit score, borrow money, pay off a mortgage, insure a new car or simply keep on top of day-to-day expenditure – there will undoubtedly be an organisation offering an alternative to the default.

Boden left the high street to look at the banking industry with fresh eyes, and cut out the ‘cumbersome, legacy systems and inbuilt bureaucracy’. It was around the time of the start of mass smartphone adoption (while everyone was trying to reinstate the exact same model of the established business of finance that had led to the crash seven years earlier). She set up Starling in 2014 and it went on to establish a number of firsts: first challenger to connect to the UK’s Faster Payments system; the first to join the Current Account Switch Service; the first to launch a banking-as-a-platform offer…  the first mobile bank in the UK.

The way we handle our finances is changing all the time; in 2007, the thought of the mobile phone as the main channel for customers’ financial transactions prompted the same sort of reaction as the concept of decentralised finance today. And look how far the former has come! So, Boden isn’t content with enlightening her audience on how our finances are, generally speaking, handled now; she also looks at ways in which they might be handled tomorrow – through ecosystems and partnerships.

Her main message is: “We are at the beginning of a revolution in the way we save, spend and manage our cash. Let’s make the most of it.”

I’m with Boden – are you?

The Money Revolution: Easy Ways To Manage Your Finances In A Digital World

by Anne Boden is published by Kogan and is available in print and Kindle format.

Great for: Digital finance newbies

Best read: If you don’t know your Wally from your Acorns

Good read

rating: ★★★★★