Charting Your Own Course: Wharton Women in FinTech
FinTech’s promise is to make financial products accessible to everyone, but what happens if it leaves 50% of the population behind?
Three stories to encourage women to enter the industry
By Ines Gonzalez del Mazo, Shompa Choudhury and Jane Bang
As of today, the FinTech industry is showing alarming gender differences that may impact its effectiveness. According to research by DHR International, Innovative Finance and FinTech 50, only 8 percent of FinTech directors globally are women and only 5% of FinTech founders across Europe. The reasons for these numbers may rely on the fact that most of the people who join the FinTech industry come from the already male-cominated tech and finance industries. Also, other studies attribute this gap to the “mirror-tocracy” — the tendency of the white-male-dominated venture capital industry to invest in other white-male-dominated businesses (only 17% of start-ups in the US in 2017 had a female founder).
As the World Bank states, if women are not involved in financial product design and service delivery, the needs and preferences of female customers may less likely be considered. This post seeks to raise awareness around the gender gap in the FinTech industry and provide advice on how more women can break in.
Since storytelling is the most powerful tool, this post shares the journey of three Wharton MBA FinTech Club Board members: Ines Gonzalez del Mazo, Shompa Choudhury and Jane Bang (WG’20).
Why Fintech and why your company?
Ines: Fighting poverty: those words have driven my career. I remember that as a kid my dad would tell me to cover my eyes when images from the extreme famine in Africa came up on television, a reaction that only aroused my curiosity on the topic. This calling took me from the United Nations, to the World Bank, to the FinTech and blockchain world. From influencing financial sector policy making in more than 33 countries, including Barbados, Morocco, India, Uruguay, Russia, and South Africa and contributing to Financial Stability Board and G20 work, now I am looking into tech to increase financial access.
Ripple is a company that caught my eye before I came to Wharton. One of my last projects at the World Bank was a project that looked into the decline in access of correspondent banking in emerging markets and its impact on remittances and international payments.. Speaking with regulators, government officials, banks and remittance operators and taking into account the need to comply with Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing (AML-CFT) rules, it was clear that the solution relied on the intersection between finance and technology: FinTech. More specifically, Ripple pilots’ provided savings of 40% to 70% in micropayments, therefore, that is the reason why I decided to work with them.
Shompa: Financial inclusion and empowerment of small businesses. Small businesses in India are the heartbeat of India’s economy. However, many of these businesses struggle to survive and grow because of lack of access to timely capital and financial advisory. Growing up in India, I have first-hand seen the struggles of many of these small businesses. In late 2017, India was experiencing a burst of energy in FinTech driven by payments. While there was increasing interest in lending, most lending FinTech companies focused on consumer lending and offered consumer lending products to small businesses. I founded Dhanvikas to create a customized offering for the specific corporate finance needs of high-growth small businesses with the dream of seeing these businesses through their journeys of multi-fold growth.
Jane: I got interested in FinTech because it is both an exciting, innovative field and an industry that has the potential to have significant, scalable social impact. I studied international development in college and have been interested in the intersection of social impact and business ever since. FinTech plays an important role at this intersection, and felt like the right place for me to combine all of those interests. I decided to join NerdWallet because its mission particularly resonates with me — to provide people with the information and tools to make better financial decisions.
How did you manage to get into the industry?
Ines: The Wharton brand and the MBA Careers Management team in the school helped tremendously. Jennifer Savoie, who at the time led FinTech recruiting was instrumental to give me the strength to believe in myself and ask Ripple for the position I truly wanted, rather than just a job posting. In start-ups, in contrast with mature companies, it is all about what you can bring to the table.
Through a Wharton second-year MBA student, I got introduced to the Director of Regulatory Relations and got invited to the office for a chat. I had prepared beforehand looking at news, Twitter and job openings, what their short-term strategy could be looking like and where I could help them. At the end of the chat, he suggested three projects in which I could collaborate, and in two months time I received an internship offer.
Shompa: My path is slightly more unconventional because I did not intentionally choose FinTech. Intrigued by the path of an entrepreneur, I always wanted to find a problem I was truly passionate about and one that could lead to a step change. Observing the impact that technology had in revolutionizing access to financial services gave me the problem I was looking for — and that’s how I stumbled into choosing FinTech.
Once I recognized that small business lending was the area I wanted to focus on, I devoted time to researching the landscape via industry reports. I spoke to everyone I could. I reached out to anyone in my network who had worked in FinTech or small business lending. It was also surprisingly easy to reach out to FinTech leaders who had started companies in similar areas via cold-emails.
The next step was actually starting the company, which is quite involved in a regulated space such as FinTech. Through my conversations, I had learned about the regulatory environment in India and had been put in touch with lawyers and regulatory consultants who helped me apply for an NBFC (Non-Banking Financial Corporation) license. The next step was to just try: break fast and fix fast. Even with a regulated industry, I found that pausing to learn from others made the industry quite accessible.
Jane: FinTech is a broad, complex industry, so I started out by learning about the landscape. Specifically, I wanted to understand where within the FinTech landscape there was the most innovation and growth, where there were market gaps, and where I wanted to be in terms of financial service category, company stage, business model, etc. This research process not only helped me identify the company that I wanted to work at, but also prepared me for the interview process. When interviewers asked me where I saw challenges or opportunities, I was prepared to answer those questions, combining the information I had gathered through my research on competitors and trends and the strategy experience I had gained during my four years as a management consultant.
What we learned navigating the space as women
Ines: Having worked in financial regulation before, the FinTech space did not look too much different in terms of gender ratios. For me, the key to navigate these environments has been to make myself relevant. I had to work hard to prove results, but also connect with co-workers and across the departments on a deeper level to have access to events, projects, conferences, etc. I believe women are much better at connecting with colleagues and perceiving people’s feelings than men: a tremendously valuable skill in a highly regulated industry in which partnerships with other companies is key to deploy any service.
Shompa: Working with small businesses in India (especially in the lending world) meant that I had signed up to be the only woman at the table. I was certainly the only woman in her 20s, and most often the only woman with decision-making authority. Typically, that meant there was a higher barrier of skepticism when I first met people: partners, prospective candidates, or clients. Walking into our open-layout office, I was often mistaken for an analyst or an assistant, and I almost always got a double-take when I said I was the CEO. I also had some unpleasant interactions with stakeholders who openly expressed discontent in dealing with a younger female counterpart, but I was fortunate to have a Board of Directors of industry stalwarts who supported me and openly endorsed my leadership. Mentally, this took some getting used to.
Knowing that I would face above-average skepticism, I would spend more time preparing for each meeting and devote time to think about how I presented myself, including my outfit, tone of communication and how I chose to introduce myself. I had to become more comfortable exuding confidence and assertiveness, and speaking openly about my past accomplishments to establish credibility. However, what I found was once I could climb that steeper initial barrier, I was able to earn trust and respect and let my work speak for itself. And without a support system of women, I invested in programs to hire more women and relied on my existing network of women leaders for mental strength. Thus, I learned to expect the steeper initial barrier, to push harder until I broke through, and to invest in a support system of women.
Jane: I’m lucky in that I found a company that has exceptional female leadership, which made my experience navigating the space easier than it might have been otherwise. But that’s not to say I didn’t actively make it a factor in my recruiting process. As someone who was new to the FinTech industry, I knew that I needed to find the right support system to set myself up for success. Part of that support system had to include female mentors, diverse colleagues, and an open culture. I found that making this a priority in my recruiting process was key to creating a positive experience over my summer, and I’m sure that it will continue to play an important role for me throughout the rest of my career.
Conclusion: Recommendations for women
Ines: I encourage women to step in. The industry is still nascent and needs the most brilliant talent to extract the promised social good. Understand your strengths and either through networking, formal web applications or creating your own venture, do not be afraid to say out loud what you can bring to the table. Plus, there are always male allies, find them!
Shompa: Don’t leave because it seems too hard. I found “firsts” to be the hardest — the first stage of starting the company, the first client meeting, the first board meeting, the first investor presentation or the first negative employee review. That barrier is steeper, and it is mentally taxing to carry the burden to scale a steeper barrier — but once you’re through, you can establish the trust and respect you deserve. And in the meanwhile, ask for help because you don’t have to do it alone to prove yourself. You can rely heavily on a support system of women you trust — be it classmate, colleagues, mentors, or even family members — to give you strength.
Jane: Two things that were really important for me were (1) finding female mentors that I could look up to and learn from and (2) reminding myself to lean in as much as I could. The first helps you shape the external factors around you to help you succeed, and the second helps you make sure that you are doing everything in your control to do well. The thing that especially resonates with me in terms of the “lean in” strategy is the part about taking career risks, so I’ll echo Ines and say you should jump in if you are interested in FinTech!
