With fintech’s gender gap stuck in the dark ages, does the next generation of women even want in? Hannah Duncan takes her Gen-Z sister to the Women in Fintech Powerlist celebration to find out.
How can a young woman on the precipice of her career get into fintech? And with women making up just 28 per cent of the industry, less than 20 per cent of executive positions and putting up with Victorian-style gender pay gaps of 22 per cent… would she even want to?
To find out, I brought my 22-year old sister Holly along with me to Innovate Finance’s Women in Fintech Powerlist 2024 celebration. Soon-to-be graduates are the future, and we need them. Intrigued to hear her freshly-minted Gen-Z views, we swam through Canary Wharf in the pouring rain looking for the KPMG office.
Gen-Z enters the building
The skyscraper was the first moment. I saw the 15-floor squeaky glass and marble building reflected in my sister’s eyes. With age, Canary Wharf seems to lose its shine as it sucks out our souls.
But for a young woman – who hasn’t yet experienced a guy called Michael taking all the credit for her work – it’s a place where sparkling career dreams can take off.
Zooming up to the 13th floor, we caught up with a flurry of fintech friends, judges and powerlisters. The Heard’s legendary Chantal Swainston, Recruit 121’s bombastic Welsh dragon Matt Hyde, regtech angel Lucy Heavens, The Fintech Times’ exquisite editor in chief Claire Woffenden.
Members of the Fintech Powerlist Standout 45 sailed around us like yachts.
Holly was soon whipped up in a whirlwind of friendly faces and clinking wine glasses. I was keeping a close eye to see who engaged with her. Would someone at the start of her career be welcomed as warmly as someone at the peak of theirs?
Working the (unworkable?) system
Settling in for the panel, I was pleasantly surprised to see a previous critique of mine had been resolved. A founder and CEO would be speaking. Excellent. Talking candidly about her journey of running OpenPayd, Iana Dimitrova reflected on how a lack of ego provided unique business advantages. She urged women to reframe their thinking about characteristics traditionally labelled as ‘weak’ or ‘soft’.
“You really need to use what you believe to be a drawback, as an advantage”, Dimitrova urged. “Because it genuinely is!”
These words resonated. One reason why I became a ghostwriter was to monetise how the credit for my work always seemed to go to someone else. Might as well make it a CEO, and get paid £600 each time, right?
Around the room, I saw lots of nodding. Murmurs of recognition. We applauded the senior women holding down two or three roles, but only getting paid for one. But what would a woman 12 years my junior make of that?
Little girls are not born unconfident
Glancing over to Holly, I could tell that that part wasn’t really resonating. As she said to me later, “but I thought that’s what we were fighting?”.
This isn’t the way that her generation celebrates. They are all about power. Activism. Wide-legged trousers. They don’t talk about needing to re-frame ‘weaknesses’… (yet?). Unlike Gen-Zs, Millennials and older generations hear a lot about how women lack confidence. But, little girls are not born unconfident, they are made.
One study found that men interrupt women 33 more times than they interrupt other men. Can someone do a workshop about “How Not to Talk Over Women in Meetings”? Maybe that would help our confidence.
Balancing out the fintech funding is another frustratingly obvious one. Two in five fintechs are created by women, but they receive just 2.3 per cent of the funding (down from 2.7 per cent in 2023, as revealed by KMPG’s head of fintech, Hannah Dobson). That’s not a question of confidence or needing to reframe skills. That’s a matter of sexism.
Anne Boden vibes
There is one fintech that shines out as a beacon to women though… you know, the profitable one.
Starling Bank’s director of financial risk, Cordelia Kafetz, shone out. Not just because of her dazzling career in the Bank of England, Financial Services Authority or European Commission. But because she talked encouragingly to my sister about coding opportunities and mentoring schemes at Starling Bank.
That’s what I was looking out for. And that’s how change happens.
Cordelia spoke about actions. From overlooked fintech features, like the option to hide payment references, which abusive ex-partners can use to bully women – already downloaded nearly 50,000 times, to adapting banking services for women-led business.
Starling has created a ’Share the load’ app, so partners can quantify how housework is allocated, to help with serious conversations. The bank also supports grassroots girls’ football teams. Let’s just say, you can tell it’s female-founded with a diverse workforce.
CFA-holding Nitika Vyas was someone else who blew all expectations out of the water. Walking away from a cushy hedge fund job, she’s recently set up the Aila Money app to help women invest. Seven in 10 of those already signed up selected ‘fear’ as the emotion they associate with money. Nitika is on a mission to change that.
Nitika’s goal is to help women achieve “the life they want”, and she has a tangible profit-making business plan to get there. In the slippery and dark fintech system, glimmers of hope for women are bursting through.
Nobody can deny that the tiny cohort of women we have in fintech are (mostly) magnificent. It might be just 28 per cent of the industry, but it’s a fabulous and passionate 28 per cent.
Optimism required
I won’t lie though. For students like Holly, the outlook for fintech is bleak. Compared to other industries, Holly’s chances of being a CEO are devastatingly low, as 96 per cent are men. Even if she creates her own fintech, her chance of getting funded (as we discovered) is just 2.3 per cent, and shrinking all the time. Welcome to UK fintech 2025.
And yet, there is still something that appeals. Holly is talking about coding now. While everyone else ditched their name badge, Holly tucked hers into her pocket as a souvenir. Walking out of KPMG’s office, she was beaming. Her impression of the industry is a “broad, adaptable and versatile market, surprisingly open to many backgrounds”. Despite all the gloomy statistics, she sees hope in the ‘creative’ and ‘fast-moving’ world.
What fintech gives to women, they will get back tenfold. Just look at Starling. But obviously the systematic chauvinism needs to go. Right now, it’s moving backwards.
For people running fintechs, if you haven’t already… provide equal paternity and maternity care… diversity decision-making roles. One job equals one salary – no matter if it’s a man or woman doing it. Apparently that’s not obvious. But it should be. It’s not even asking for that much.
My advice to hiring managers? Add ‘optimism required’ to your job descriptions. Today’s women need it.
Thank you so much to Innovate Finance for welcoming us to the event, and for listing me as a member of the Standout 45 Powerlist.
The post Women in Fintech… Just About Thriving (or Just Surviving?) appeared first on The Fintech Times.
