‘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…