Iona Bain

Biography

Iona Bain is an award-winning journalist, broadcaster and author specialising in personal finance. The resident money expert on BBC One's Morning Live and host of the A Little Bit Richer podcast, her combination of accessibility and authority has seen her named Financial Journalist of the Year by the Institute for Financial Wellbeing.

As well as exploring a wide range of money and financial issues, Iona also focuses on generational differences in approaches to finance from work and pensions to AI and fintech. A reporter on the BBC's Panorama, she has also presented  File on 4 and Moneybox for Radio 4, and written columns or The Observer and The Metro.  The founder of the pioneering Young Money Blog, Iona is also active online, providing financial and money advice on social media, and she has appeared on Channel 4’s Cryptocurrency: Has the Bubble Burst?, Rip Off Britain, Newsnight, Question Time, The One Show and Channel 5 documentaries including Loyalty Cards: Are They a Rip-Off? Her empathetic approach earned her the title Money Hacker in residence for Radio 1’s advice programme Life Hacks, and she's written for everything from British Vogue to the Financial Times to the New Statesman.

Iona’s beginnings in the finance world came when she was a jobbing musician still living at her parents’ home. She founded the Young Money Blog to help her generation get to grips with their finances, and it became a key platform for highlighting the importance of savings and investment amongst a group generally disinterested in such things. She's also advised financial services companies on how best to serve new generations of customers, and looks at the effects of personal finance on mental health and wellbeing.

Iona's book Own It! looks at how young people can invest their way to a better future, whilst her Spare Change helps readers to examine their personal relationship with money and create a practical plan. She works with a range of charities and educational organisations, including as an ambassador for National Numeracy, as well as BBC Social and BBC Bitesize. 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.