Iona Bain

Iona Bain is an award-winning journalist, broadcaster, speaker, and author, specialising in personal finance and young people. She is the UK’s go-to voice on millennial money, and BBC Morning Live's resident financial expert.

Since founding the pioneering Young Money Blog, Iona has gone on to become one of the most respected financial writers of her generation, with a rare combination of accessibility and authority. Iona’s beginnings in the finance world came when she was a jobbing musician still living at her parents’ home, and her savings were burgled from her piggy bank. She founded the Young Money Blog to help her generation get to grips with their finances, and it has since become a key platform for highlighting the importance of savings and investment amongst a group notoriously disinterested in such things.

She also advises financial services companies on how best to serve a new, younger customer, and looks at the effects of personal finance on mental health and wellbeing.

Iona has also appeared on Channel 4’s Cryptocurrency: Has the Bubble Burst?, Rip Off Britain, Newsnight, Question Time and The One Show, she has also been a roving financial reporter on Steph’s Packed Lunch. Her empathetic approach has earned her the title Money Hacker in residence for Radio 1’s flagship advice programme Life Hacks.

She is a staple of online youth and female-focused media, with contributions to VICE UK, British Vogue, and Refinery 29. Iona writes a weekly column for the i paper and is a regular contributor to the Financial Times. Her journalism and commentary have appeared extensively in both national and regional titles, including the Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, The Independent, and the New Statesman. Her book Own It! is about how young people can invest their way to a better future.

Iona is particularly proud of her educational work, having collaborated with BBC Social, BBC Bitesize and Young Scot, to produce a series of educational videos. She has worked with the Lloyds Banking Academy on the Your Future Finances initiative, the first educational programme in the UK to be fully sign language enabled and is the youngest-ever governor of the Pensions Policy Institute.