I hope she’ll forgive me but when you think about finance you don’t necessarily think passion, do you? But talk to investment guru Barbara-Ann King and that’s immediately what comes across: passion with perhaps the faintest trace of anger.

King is more than a little annoyed that women are so slow on the uptake when it comes to investment. “Women are earning more, they are running businesses and families but still they are not engaging in personal finance in the way they should be”, she explains from her Canary Wharf office where she presides as Head of Female Client Group at Barclays Wealth. “If you look at women statistically their money is still sitting in cash, they’re not even taking up ISA allowances and tax allowances.”

King is educating me on what she’s calling the Female Economy. More women are building businesses, entering professions and earning money in their own right. This along with social and lifestyle change means that women are influencers and key decision maker in a household or family unit. “Research tells us that women often drive a decision more than a man. We feel there are grounds now for addressing these groups more directly.”

And address this group directly she will, as she works to build a brand new division of Barclays’ private banking unit that focuses solely on female clients.

The message? Women have to face up to finance. “What women often do is put their financial affairs and life admin right at the bottom of their to-do list and we’re saying you can’t do that, it’s important that you’re up there and planning.”

‘Smart Woman’ is the education arm of the operation and something King holds close to her heart. “This whole programme is about education and I feel really strongly that it should start at school level. Women are still not nurtured with the message you will grow up and be an earner. It is changing but it needs to change more.” She believes the UK is still behind the times. “In the US, men and women are encouraged to invest from a very early age. And it’s women from all levels of net worth. It’s not about how much money you’ve got; it’s about how savvy you are.”

Savvy is a word no doubt levelled at the lady herself, with an impressive, though unpredictable, CV that spans law and academia, as well as finance. Her education background – she lectured undergraduate law at Southampton University for a time – is probably what drives her passion: “It’s about empowering women. I actually get annoyed on behalf of the women that aren’t doing it” she says with a wry laugh. “To be able to make this a focus is terrific. We’re aiming for women from the youngest age possible in the UK to be better educated on how to manage money. That underpins a lot of the future success of it.”

The second part of the plan is to help women become more active with their investments. “That hour you take out to go and buy a pair of shoes?” Yes, what of it? “Make that an hour where you put finance on the agenda. Otherwise you’re not maximising all that hard work you’re putting into earning money.”

She’s not suggesting we begin trading on the stock market every day, an investment ISA would be a good start. King says it’s about starting at a really low level but then when someone starts really earning money, “you might think about investing in private equity, hedge funds…you can get as aggressive as you want”. She continues: “Women know they have to do it but they don’t know where to turn. They’re turned off by the jargon.”

So is she and Barclays filling a gap? “Yes, number one as an investment professional but number two as a woman because I understand the female dynamics. It’s about becoming that trusted advisor.”

Mentor is another title afforded to King. As she puts it, she’s “a formal mentor to few and an informal mentor to many”. And it’s a role she takes very seriously. “It’s about being a role model in an industry where we’re still a minority,” she explains. “I mentor people within the firm but I’m also passionate about helping girls at school level so I sit on the advisory board of a school in Greenwich.” Jamie Oliver alert?! She laughs before pausing to say: “There definitely will be at some point a thread of my life where I will focus very much on that, and will work with government and local parties to help drive this forward. Girls need to know they can be a CEO or world leader if they want to be.”

What’s refreshing about King, well one of the many things, is her utter modesty and unnervingly laidback approach. She credits her unconventional career path and unwillingness to commit to any kind of ‘five-year-plan’ as her making.

“I went to Guildford to study law and went through the career solicitor route. Shortly after that I went into academia as a university lecturer. That took me on a really unusual twist and as a mentor it’s something I always pass on – take opportunities when they come. You can pass over one, you could maybe pass over two but if you carry on passing up opportunities you’ll start to lose all the future potential.”

The twist came in the form of a legal loophole that prevented students from Greece and Spain to complete their law degrees in the UK if they then wanted to return home to practice. “Some smart person said, how about we set up a university campus over there? I was asked to set up that programme which actually was my foray into the business arena. I thought id be a career lawyer or a career academic but found I actually had real business acumen and commercial skill set.”

After helping to establish a successful university franchise she worked in London at Churchill Consultancy before being headhunted for Global Head of Alternative Investments (that’s anything not stock market-related, I learned) at Citi Bank, a job that took her to New York for three years. Seven years later she was headhunted by Barclays, which brings us to now.

“I never had a master plan” she insists. “I know that I enjoy business, I know that I enjoy clients and I actually enjoy the finance industry but if you were to ask me what I’ll be doing in five years time, I’d say I don’t know. What I do know is this is something I’ll be invested in for the rest of my life, regardless of whether I’m in banking or not.”