Biography
Afua Kyei is the Bank's Chief Financial Officer and Executive Director responsible for Finance, Strategy, Performance, and Tax. She is co-executive sponsor for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and co-executive sponsor for the Bank's Climate Change disclosure.
She joined in June 2019 and has been at the core of the Bank's leadership and decision making. Afua oversees the financial governance of the Bank's balance sheet, which at its peak, grew to over £1 trillion during the Covid pandemic. She has been responsible for modernising the Bank's funding mechanism as reflected in the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023. Afua is a Director of the Bank of England Asset Purchase Facility Fund, Alternative Liquidity Facility, and previously the Covid Corporate Financing Facility. She is a member of the Bank's Executive Board overseeing the upgrade of the UK's Real Time Gross Settlement System, Critical National Infrastructure, which processes over £700bn payments each day. Afua is a keynote speaker and represents the Bank at national and international fora including International Monetary Fund, G20, COP, with industry and in the community.
Afua was named the most influential Black woman in the UK in the Powerlist 2024 and 2025, and also received the 2024 Powerlist Executive of the Year Award, sponsored by the Executive Leadership Council. In 2024, Afua was honoured as the top female on the Empower Global Executives Role Model List 2024, supported by YouTube. She was also recognised in the 2024 Women of the Year Awards. In 2023, Afua was awarded the Freedom of the City of London. Afua was included in the 2023 list of 100 Most Reputable Africans by Reputation Poll International. She was named CFO of the Year 2021 by the Women in Finance Awards UK.
Afua joined the Bank from Barclays Bank (2012-2019) where she was the Chief Financial Officer Mortgages and played a key role in Barclays' strategic cost transformation program, TRANSFORM, whilst in the Investment Bank and in Group COO. She was a D&I ambassador, while at Barclays.
During the Global Financial Crisis, she was an Investment Banker at UBS (2007-2012) in the Financial Institutions Group and in Mergers and Acquisitions, Group Strategic Advisory. She was part of the team that helped advise RBS during the financial crisis 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. Prior to that, Afua qualified as a Chartered Accountant (ICAS) with Ernst & Young.
Afua read Chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford University (2000-2004) where she was selected to be a member of Professor Sir Jack Baldwin's research group; her Organic Chemistry research on the creation of anti-tumorous molecules using Organic Synthesis was published in an international science journal. She graduated with a Master's degree and was also awarded a Junior Research Fellowship by Princeton University in Organic Chemistry. In 2023, Afua was elected an Honorary Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford University.
Afua is passionate about achieving better outcomes for society and driving cultural changes within organisations.
