The male domination of the finance industry could be at an end, and it may surprise some that the beginning of that end starts with FinTech. Financial technology or FinTech is the technological disruption of the traditional finance world. New software, apps, and ways of managing money aren’t quite making conventional banking obsolete, but this digital transformation is certainly making old school banks sit up and take note. The gender gap in all tech roles is still a problem – only around 25% of employees across major tech giants are women – but within the realms of FinTech, things may be starting to change for the better.

Notable Female FinTech Leaders

Stripe is possibly one of the biggest payment processing platforms right now. The completely digital payment solution spans over 120 countries and is used by notable clients like Shopify, Magento, and Ekata. Sarah Browne recently joined the leadership team at Stripe as Chief Risk Officer and Head of Compliance. This is on the back of over two decades at the prestigious Bank of Ireland, focusing on leveraging technical expertise to drive organizational growth.

Further up the leadership ladder, Suzanne Chishti is a renowned thought leader and CEO of FinTech Circle, a digital platform for investors with over 130,000 members.

Jess Turner works for credit card giant Mastercard and is actually in charge of all things FinTech. She’s the vice president of digital infrastructure and actively wants to design a financial world that always keeps women in mind and involved at all levels.

A Global Phenomenon

It’s not just across America that things are changing. In Africa, there are twice as many women-led FinTechs as other places in the world. However, female founders of financial products may struggle to get the funding they need due to pervasive sexism within existing financial channels. One woman striving to shatter the glass ceiling is Oluwatosin Olaseinde, a financial analyst who puts out entertaining financial tutorials on Instagram. She’s now the head of Money Africa and founder of investment platform Ladda.

In the UK, financial group NatWest recently ran a review that found that women-run businesses were growing at a faster rate than those run by their male counterparts. According to NatWest’s CEO, Alison Rose, the key is to give women equal funding opportunities and the same support as male entrepreneurs. The recommendations based on this review could lead to more British female-run startups, thanks to initiatives like the Investing in Women Code. Perhaps that’s something that will occur more frequently now that women have proven themselves as capable and innovative in the world of FinTech.

Still a Huge Gender Bias

Despite these massive steps forward on a global scale, women still face many obstacles in the FinTech industry. Harassment in the workplace, lack of opportunity for career progression, and the perception that the financial industry is still male-dominated were all cited as problematic in a recent article on FinTech Futures.

And let’s be clear: it’s still a relatively small number of FinTech companies with women at the top. Around 6% of FinTech companies have female CEOs, while only 12% of founders are women. There’s a fear that FinTech could go the way of traditional finance, with the vast majority of trailblazers and leaders still white men who don’t or can’t understand the importance of diversity within both finance and STEM – simply because they’ve never experienced anything else.

Sylvia Carrasco is a female entrepreneur based in the UK and CEO of Goldex Technologies Limited, an international FinTech integrated marketplace for physical gold. Sylvia works with young women to get them interested in FinTech early. She believes that approaching women once they’ve finished college is too late, as they’ve picked an academic or vocational path by then. She told a TechTarget publication recently, “Equality of opportunities must start being imprinted in childhood, at schools, and by families.” Seeing these inspiring women in FinTech in the news and on social media will hopefully inspire the next generation of young women to leap into the worlds of finance and technological innovation.

Final Word

How does having women on the team help your startup succeed? Understanding the benefits of diversity helps FinTech companies work with the right people because of what they bring to the table, rather than simply to hit their corporate social responsibility targets. The more diverse the range of voices on your board and on your marketing team, the more you can relate to a wide demographic of potential consumers.

If you want to learn more about getting your products or services out to the right people, book a 15-minute introductory call with our tech-focused marketing team, who will connect you to the right freelancer for your FinTech proposition.

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