Afua Kyei

Afua Kyei became the Bank of England’s first black executive and youngest executive director when she was appointed to the top job at the age of 36.

In-post since 2019, she sits at the heart of the bank’s leadership and decision-making, overseeing the financial governance of the bank’s balance sheet – which at its peak grew to more than £1 trillion during the Covid pandemic. She is a director of the Bank of England Asset Purchase Facility Fund, Alternative Liquidity Facility, and previously the Covid Corporate Financing Facility.

Afua is also a member of the bank’s executive board, which has overseen the upgrade of the UK’s real-time gross settlement system – critical national infrastructure that processes more than £800bn payments each day. The new system went live earlier this year, having last been upgraded 29 years ago.

A vocal proponent of diversity and inclusion, Afua is the bank’s co-executive sponsor for DE&I as well as co-executive sponsor for climate change disclosure.

Afua is a keynote speaker and represents the bank at national and international fora including the IMF, G20, and COP. Last December she was a speaker at the inaugural Bloomberg Women, Money and Power conference. In April 2024, Afua hosted the first-ever flagship Black Talent Charter executive event at the Bank of England, a live discussion attended by C-suite leaders across private equity and FTSE 100 companies.

Afua joined the Bank of England from Barclays Bank, where she was the CFO for mortgages and played a key role in Barclays’ strategic cost transformation program. During the global financial crisis, she was an investment banker at UBS (2007–2012) and part of the team that helped advise RBS in relation to its divestments mandated as part of EU State Aid remediation, its participation in HM Treasury’s £282bn Asset Protection Scheme, and its capital issuance of £33.5bn to HM Treasury.

Afua read Chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford University, graduating with a master’s degree and awarded a junior research fellowship in Organic Chemistry by Princeton University. In 2023, Afua was elected an honorary fellow of Somerville College and was awarded the Freedom of the City of London.