Recruitment in fintech: fostering diversity

The fin­tech industry’s lack of progress in pro­mot­ing diver­si­ty is aston­ish­ing, but the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic offers a chance to change.

The prob­lem is still mas­sive. For exam­ple, a study by LendIt found that only 37 per cent of fin­tech employ­ees are female and just 19 per cent hold C‑suite posi­tions.

The best fin­tech com­pa­nies recruit glob­al­ly across all ages and cul­tures. This approach has helped dri­ve their growth. But even they have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to trans­form more rad­i­cal­ly to address imbal­ances in areas such as gen­der and race.

COVID-19 lock­downs have led to unprece­dent­ed invest­ment in tech­nol­o­gy, accord­ing to a sur­vey by KPMG. Most chief invest­ment offi­cers report spend­ing more on tech­nol­o­gy due to the pan­dem­ic, with an aver­age increase of 5 per cent. Some 86 per cent have moved to remote work­ing and most antic­i­pate large num­bers of staff will con­tin­ue work­ing from home.

Ele­na Kru­to­va, glob­al head of human resources at mul­ti-asset bro­ker Exness, says: “Fin­tech is one of the fastest evolv­ing indus­tries with high lev­els of inno­va­tion. But men still dom­i­nate the sec­tor and few­er female can­di­dates are avail­able for recruit­ment, com­pared to oth­er indus­tries.

“The fin­tech sec­tor has react­ed faster than oth­er indus­tries to pan­dem­ic-relat­ed changes such as remote work­ing. They accept­ed quick­ly that the world will nev­er be the same. This increas­es the oppor­tu­ni­ty to recruit a more diverse work­force, based only on a person’s val­ues and pro­fes­sion­al­ism.”

Cohesive and dynamic

The pan­dem­ic will con­tin­ue to dri­ve dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion as com­pa­nies keep adapt­ing to the uncer­tain­ties and finan­cial pres­sures it has cre­at­ed. This affects almost every­thing from online shop­ping expe­ri­ences to dis­tance learn­ing and telemed­i­cine.

This change has high­light­ed the press­ing short­age of tech­nol­o­gy tal­ent in the mar­ket and forced fin­tech firms to focus intent­ly on attract­ing and retain­ing staff. Attract­ing more females and minor­i­ty groups will help them address the tal­ent gap.

But it will also make their tech­ni­cal teams more cohe­sive and dynam­ic. Research shows adding diver­si­ty improves a range of team met­rics. For exam­ple, 67 per cent of chief infor­ma­tion offi­cers say pro­mot­ing diver­si­ty has increased trust and col­lab­o­ra­tion in the tech­nol­o­gy team and improved access to skills, accord­ing to the KPMG sur­vey.

But to boost diver­si­ty fur­ther, fin­tech firms need to erad­i­cate bias­es in the way lead­ers are select­ed, pro­mot­ed and men­tored. It is a stiff chal­lenge giv­en that only 24 per cent of IT lead­ers feel their organ­i­sa­tions are very suc­cess­ful at pro­mot­ing diver­si­ty and inclu­sion in their teams.

One way to solve the prob­lem is to improve ben­e­fits and schemes that women and minori­ties val­ue. For exam­ple, the COVID cri­sis should be a cat­a­lyst for pro­mot­ing flex­i­ble work­ing for peo­ple with car­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties.

Many women’s careers have been held back by fam­i­ly and car­ing duties. But the pan­dem­ic has shown flex­i­ble work­ers can be high­ly pro­duc­tive.

Kru­to­va says: “Exness employ­ees who now work from home have been at least as pro­duc­tive. Par­ents work­ing from home should have more access to the job mar­ket com­pared to last year. If their com­pa­ny offers the right flex­i­bil­i­ty, work­ing moth­ers can main­tain pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and all work­ers can enjoy a bet­ter work-life bal­ance, which will make them more pro­duc­tive. The only major lim­i­ta­tion should be their broad­band con­nec­tion.

“Remote tech­nol­o­gy allows a glob­al approach, but it also brings chal­lenges, such as work­ing across time zones. Or dur­ing a Zoom chat, for exam­ple, you need to lis­ten very atten­tive­ly to make sure you under­stand the oth­er person’s cul­tur­al per­spec­tive and lose noth­ing in trans­la­tion. But the oppor­tu­ni­ties to recruit a more diverse work­force far out­weigh this.”

Education and culture

Recruit­ment, edu­ca­tion and cul­ture must also change. The fin­tech indus­try has a rep­u­ta­tion for inno­va­tion and upend­ing tra­di­tion. Now, more than ever, com­pa­nies must apply this prin­ci­ple in recruit­ment. Hir­ing from out­side finan­cial ser­vices, for exam­ple oth­er rel­e­vant tech­nol­o­gy sec­tors, should help.

“Fin­tech is dif­fer­ent from the rest of finan­cial ser­vices, in which peo­ple often tend to pro­tect their posi­tions with safe recruit­ment choic­es. In fin­tech, we need to step out of our com­fort zones and recruit peo­ple with a more trans­par­ent mind­set and who are bet­ter than us,” Kru­to­va points out.

“At Exness, we spend lots of time train­ing and edu­cat­ing our team around this prin­ci­ple because each time you hire some­one bet­ter than you, it opens new oppor­tu­ni­ties. There are no lim­its as to what ‘bet­ter’ means.

“We want each per­son we hire to change the com­pa­ny in some way. The cul­ture in fin­tech is to inno­vate and cre­ate some­thing new every day, which requires you to bring in new exper­tise con­stant­ly. This is hard­er if man­agers lim­it them­selves by only mak­ing safe recruit­ment deci­sions.”

Kru­to­va says recruit­ment for diver­si­ty requires a wide range of tools and mech­a­nisms for assess­ing can­di­dates fair­ly.

“We have employ­ees from around 60 nation­al­i­ties in our com­pa­ny,” she says. “In addi­tion to tak­ing a glob­al recruit­ment mind­set, we have a recruit­ment com­mit­tee, not just one or two peo­ple, who bring a range of per­spec­tives into the hir­ing process. These per­spec­tives add val­ue to the way we col­lab­o­rate.”

Caring culture

Fin­tech com­pa­nies should not use pos­i­tive dis­crim­i­na­tion just to fill a quo­ta. Firms should always recruit based on a candidate’s pro­fes­sion­al lev­el first, rather than for the sake of bal­anc­ing diver­si­ty.

But fin­tech com­pa­nies need to reassess their atti­tudes about how less-rep­re­sent­ed groups such as women can add val­ue to this indus­try. In addi­tion to edu­ca­tion, they need to pro­vide under-rep­re­sent­ed groups access to devel­op­ment and pro­mo­tion. This will give these groups a sup­port­ive envi­ron­ment and a chance to believe in them­selves.

Fin­tech HR man­agers have made some progress, but they need to go to the next lev­el in embrac­ing dif­fer­ence.

Final­ly, nur­tur­ing a more social­ly respon­si­ble cul­ture should help. Kru­to­va con­cludes: “Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, many fin­tech firms have pro­tect­ed employ­ees’ jobs, helped them cope with the uncer­tain­ties and care for their fam­i­lies. All this demon­strates a high regard for social respon­si­bil­i­ty, which has a huge­ly pos­i­tive effect on employ­ees and can also help attract peo­ple with sim­i­lar val­ues.

“The oppor­tu­ni­ties in fin­tech are enor­mous. There are pos­i­tive changes occur­ring around the world. Remote work­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties add to these changes, but there’s a long way to go.

“We shouldn’t be afraid to accept new chal­lenges, even in the cur­rent cli­mate. We should try to take some­thing pos­i­tive from COVID by see­ing it as a chance to improve and become more car­ing and diverse.”

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it www.exness.uk

Pro­mot­ed by

Exness