How can the payments sector attract more female talent?

Gen­der diver­si­ty has become a hot top­ic of debate across board­rooms, per­haps nowhere more so than in finan­cial ser­vices. Tra­di­tion­al­ly male-dom­i­nat­ed, the indus­try is com­ing under grow­ing reg­u­la­to­ry scruti­ny to close the gen­der gap.

Indus­try-wide ini­tia­tives such as the Women in Finance Char­ter – a Trea­sury-led scheme to which more than 400 firms have signed up – cou­pled with the intro­duc­tion of gen­der pay gap report­ing, have had a pos­i­tive impact. A glob­al study by the Oliv­er Wyman con­sul­tan­cy before the pan­dem­ic found that the sec­tor was mak­ing the fastest progress on increas­ing the num­ber of women in senior lead­er­ship roles since the start of its research in 2003. 

The pay­ments sec­tor, which has grown con­sid­er­ably over the past decade thanks to increas­ing inno­va­tion and a spike in demand for dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion, has fared par­tic­u­lar­ly well on female rep­re­sen­ta­tion. A report by McK­in­sey found that in North Amer­i­ca, almost 40% of C‑suite posi­tions in the sec­tor are held by women, sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er than the indus­try aver­age. In addi­tion, women of colour make up 9% of the C suite in pay­ments – the high­est rep­re­sen­ta­tion among all finan­cial ser­vices sec­tors. 

Sophie Fly­nn, who co-found­ed UK-based pay­ments firm Transact365 in 2017, has start­ed to see an improve­ment in the gen­der bal­ance in recent years. “I’m meet­ing more and more female coun­ter­parts in the sec­tor and there’s a steadi­ly grow­ing num­ber of women look­ing for careers in pay­ments, which is great and shows that we’re slow­ly mak­ing progress.”

In the UK, improve­ments have been dri­ven by the Finan­cial Con­duct Authority’s com­mit­ment to accel­er­at­ing change in finan­cial ser­vices. There is grow­ing recog­ni­tion here that gen­der diver­si­ty can improve cul­ture and gov­er­nance, boost inno­va­tion and lead to more pos­i­tive out­comes in risk man­age­ment. Yet, in many ways, the con­ver­sa­tion about gen­der par­i­ty remains in its infan­cy. 

“When we look at how things have moved on in the past cou­ple of years, it feels that we’ve start­ed to see a shift in the indus­try, but there’s def­i­nite­ly a way to go,” says Louise Buck­ley, COO at the Pay­ment Sys­tems Reg­u­la­tor (PSR). 

In 2017, the PSR became a sig­na­to­ry of the government’s Women in Finance char­ter. Buck­ley says that organ­i­sa­tions can “demon­strate their com­mit­ment to doing their part by get­ting involved in ini­tia­tives like this, as well as by build­ing and, impor­tant­ly, sus­tain­ing diverse and inclu­sive work­places”.

Fly­nn echoes this sen­ti­ment. “There is still a long way to go. The fin­tech indus­try as a whole is still only made up of 30% women,” she notes. “What is worse is that only 1.5% of glob­al fin­tech busi­ness­es are found­ed sole­ly by women. That needs to change.”

While impos­ing quo­tas on busi­ness­es is undoubt­ed­ly help­ing to lev­el the play­ing field, women in the sec­tor believe that mea­sures must go beyond reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments and box-tick­ing ini­tia­tives. This includes greater recog­ni­tion of the chal­lenges fac­ing female employ­ees. 

Lor­raine Deschamps is EMEA head of cor­po­rate cit­i­zen­ship at Fis­erv, a finan­cial ser­vices con­sul­tan­cy based in Wis­con­sin. She points out that someone’s com­mit­ment to their career in a male-dom­i­nat­ed envi­ron­ment – such as how well that per­son can bal­ance their work and home respon­si­bil­i­ties – is often judged by male stan­dards.

“Not all women have the means to get round some of these chal­lenges. Many will lim­it their goals because they think they won’t be suc­cess­ful or they won’t be sup­port­ed,” Deschamps explains. “The ever-grow­ing momen­tum in diver­si­ty, equi­ty and inclu­sion is mak­ing peo­ple more con­scious of this think­ing, but bias can still affect peo­ple-focused deci­sion-mak­ing. It takes real com­mit­ment by organ­i­sa­tions to be inten­tion­al­ly inclu­sive and to ensure that such com­mit­ment extends from the top to low­er man­age­r­i­al lev­els.”

Recent research by Inno­vate Finance has found that women in fin­tech still have less access than men to equi­ty and debt fund­ing. In 2021, only 10% of ven­ture cap­i­tal invest­ed in the sec­tor went to female-led firms in the UK – a fig­ure that has remained stub­born­ly flat for four years. 

“Female founders are unrep­re­sent­ed in ven­ture cap­i­tal fund­ing. That might hin­der women’s busi­ness ini­tia­tives,” says Denise Johans­son, co-founder and co-CEO of Enfuce, a glob­al pay­ment provider based in Helsin­ki. “Hope­ful­ly, as the ven­ture cap­i­tal world has a shift in mind­set and gains gen­der diver­si­ty, the gap in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of ven­ture cap­i­tal funds can be bridged.”

Arguably one of the great­est bar­ri­ers that women face is a lack of con­fi­dence com­bined with the per­sis­tent belief that finance is a male pre­serve. Edu­ca­tion has a key role to play in shift­ing this and encour­ag­ing more women to enter the sec­tor. 

Enfuce’s oth­er co-founder and co-CEO, Moni­ka Liika­maa, believes that young women need to see more female lead­ers in finan­cial ser­vices. 

“On a broad­er lev­el, it’s impor­tant to deliv­er diver­si­ty of all kinds. We as female founders in finance want to show that there are no lim­i­ta­tions,” she says.

As gen­der diver­si­ty improves, it cre­ates an upward spi­ral of inclu­sion in the indus­try and wider soci­ety, Liika­maa adds. “Through diver­si­ty of think­ing, com­pa­nies can cre­ate new ser­vices that solve new prob­lems across the indus­try and take into account the needs of var­ied user groups, result­ing in more inclu­sive ser­vices.”

Deschamps believes that pos­i­tive change starts at school. “We need to be reach­ing out to young female tal­ent in the edu­ca­tion sys­tem or to those who haven’t yet entered the job mar­ket to build aware­ness of the oppor­tu­ni­ties and shape their aspi­ra­tions,” she says. “For those women in an organ­i­sa­tion, we have to devel­op plat­forms that sup­port their growth and edu­cate every­one on why that mat­ters.”

Indeed, stud­ies have shown that a ‘net­work gap’ can dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affect women. While men have enjoyed decades of net­work­ing, with many ben­e­fit­ing from the so-called old boys’ club, the rise of women in senior posi­tions has been a rel­a­tive­ly new phe­nom­e­non. A study by LinkedIn has found that women are 27% less like­ly than men to have a strong net­work. 

“We need to make sure we’re fos­ter­ing a work­ing cul­ture that allows women to thrive and make their voic­es heard,” Fly­nn says. “I know how impor­tant it is that their views are lis­tened to.”

The pow­er of female net­works is sim­i­lar­ly impor­tant to Johans­son, who says the suc­cess of Enfuce has depend­ed on help from oth­ers. “As a female founder, I’ve come to realise that there is a strong net­work of peo­ple ready to sup­port you if you just take every oppor­tu­ni­ty to build that net­work and ask for help.”

She con­tin­ues: “We had an idea and we knew how to realise it, but we lacked cap­i­tal and deep legal com­pe­tence, so we reached out to peo­ple we knew could help us. Not one of them turned down the chance to help. There is pow­er in net­works.”