English banker who established in London the merchant banking business of Cunliffe Brothers (afterward Goschens and Cunliffe).

The son of Roger Cunliffe, a banker of the City of London, he was educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, and became a banker in 1880, establishing Cunliffe Brothers in 1890. He became a director of the Bank of England in 1895, deputy governor in 1911, and governor in 1913, an office that he held until 1918. He was raised to the peerage in December 1914. Lord Cunliffe was associated with the working out of all the chief financial problems during World War I and, in 1917, accompanied A.J. Balfour on his financial mission to the United States.