Fintech has exploded over the past decade from a nascent offshoot of the tech sector to a multi-billion dollar industry. At its height in 2021, the fintech sector attracted more than $225 billion in investment.
Apps like Klarna, CashApp, and Monzo are redefining the ways in which consumers and businesses interact with their money. The profound success of the fintech sector is causing a frantic scramble (by the standards of large financial institutions) to invest, acquire, and adapt from traditional financial institutions.
In short, fintech is one of the most dynamic, forward-thinking, and exciting sectors you could hope to work in. At least, that’s how it likes to present itself.
However, new research conducted by Dr Chloe Fox-Robertson and Professor Dariusz Wojcik suggests otherwise. Despite attracting a great deal of financial investment, “FinTech is causing minimal disruption to the financial landscape, tending to represent a process of re-intermediation rather than dis-intermediation. FinTechs collaborate with or replace incumbents,” they write.
This undercurrent of conservatism—linked to Fintech’s heritage in the entrepreneurial, financial, and technology sectors—is also responsible for the underrepresentation of women in the industry. This is especially true among senior positions.
Fox-Robertson and Wojcik’s suggests that, in fintech, “discriminatory practices are overt and implicit, everyday and exceptional, micro and acute.”
A “triple glass ceiling”
“Fintech gender inequalities result from male dominance in finance, technology and entrepreneurship,” Fox-Robertson and Wojcik argue. Each of these three sectors is grappling with its own gender imbalance. Women might make up 47% of all employed adults in the US, as of 2022. However, they hold only 28% of computing and mathematical roles, according to data from Zippia.
According to data from Accenture, the ratio of women to men in technology roles actually declined in the past three decades. Half of all women who enter the tech industry drop out by the age of 35. As a result, far fewer women reach higher level executive positions within tech companies.
The same is true in finance, and across startup culture in general. Fox-Robertson and Wojcik found the male dominance of the FinTech sector to be “particularly salient” at the senior levels. Under 5% of companies studied were led by a female CEO. Women accounted for, on average, 18.2% of executive committee positions and 27.67% of FinTechs were found to have an entirely male executive team.
The contributing inequalities stemming from each, highly male-dominated, industry conspire to create a “triple glass ceiling.”
Technology, finance, and entrepreneurship each have a tradition of “longstanding male dominance” and “continued privileging of masculinity.” Masculine coded traits are rewarded within these industries’ cultures, while traditionally feminine characteristics are undervalued and dismissed.
“This ‘boys’ club’ culture within the senior levels of Fintech” is a significant barrier to women progressing within the sector.
In the UK, women account for 28% of the fintech workforce but only 17% of senior roles. In 2019, just 12.2% of the 3,017 fintech startups in the UK had at least one woman (co-)founder.
A challenge to the industry
Fintech’s image is ostensibly one of progress, of disruption. The sector is supposedly taking the innovative spirit of startup culture and the transformative power of technology to profoundly change the nature of the conservative, lumbering financial sector. However, Fox-Robertson and Wojcik argue that fintech’s actual impact is much less disruptive than its messaging claims. Not only that, but they observe that the industry has synthesised the ingrained misogyny of all three industries it pulls from.
As a result, Fox-Robertson and Wojcik are calling for “a collective challenge that holds the industry accountable”. Such action would be “necessary for (re)developing the fintech ecosystem to make it a more inclusive, equitable, and attractive environment for individuals.”
The impetus for this goes beyond a simple moral imperative, however. There are well documented benefits to greater diversity. The positive impact of diverse perspectives is both fiscal and societal. For example, companies with increased diversity tend to financially outperform their competitors. The economic benefit is also collective. Fox-Robertson and Wojcik note that the UK economy could be boosted by as much as £250 billion annually if entrepreneurial gender parity could be achieved.
Global fintech funding fell by 42% last year. EMEA and Latin America were hit hardest, exhibiting regional drops of 62% and 71% respectively to $8 billion and $1 billion, respectively. North America and APAC fared better, but only just.
The industry appears to be bouncing back, but experts at McKinsey argue that “in the new era, a challenged funding environment means fintechs can no longer afford to sprint.” Fintech’s need to take a new approach and embrace new perspectives. Addressing diversity in a meaningful way could help secure a more successful future for the industry and its stakeholders.
- Fintech & Insurtech
- People & Culture
