FinLeap’s Insights: More Women in Fintech
FinLeap’s Insights: More Women in Fintech – Tough, but worth it!
It’s not a secret: The amount of women in tech companies is low. Another non-secret: The percentage of women in finance in top positions is low. Not to mention the amount of female entrepreneurs, which is – you guessed right – even lower.
Now, at FinLeap, we combine all three branches: finance, tech, entrepreneurship. Not a surprise: our amount of women in the company, especially when it comes to top level positions, is not as high as we wished it would be.
Studies reveal different causes why we face this shortage: women are often not enabled to choose a career in tech, coding classes should start already in schools, women tend to underestimate their performance – even if it was better than the one from men.
On the other hand, other studies reveal the high advantages of having women in top level positions.
Companies with at least one woman on the board had a 26 % better performance than companies with male-only boards according to a study from Credit Suisse Research Institute. 89% of female entrepreneurs surveyed expected growing or stable profits in the next 12 months, the 2016 BNP Paribas Global Entrepreneur Report says. A Forbes study found out that female tech entrepreneurs are able to generate 20 % more revenue than their male counterparts – although receiving 50 percent less VC funding.
One example for a successful gender balanced company is Lever, a tech company based in the Silicon Valley. Lever is founded and run by a female CEO, Sarah Nahm. The management of Lever is 53 percent female. The company’s board is 40 percent female. Technical roles are 43 percent women. A great success story, with a sad twist: the fact that there is a tech company with a balanced diversity is still worth a news article – obviously because it’s so rare.
So, what can we do to enable more women to start a career in the Fintech field? First, finding and connecting them by starting a large network.
On September 16, our Managing Director Carolin Gabor initiated the “Fintech Ladies Europe” initiative for female Fintech Founders and Top Women in Banking and Insurance dedicated to Digitization. The goals are: exchanging, cooperating, working on new ideas, pushing each other and especially showing, that women can also make it in Tech and Finance.
The Fintech Ladies Europe network started with several dinners across Europe last year, connecting the most influential women in the field, getting to know supporters and partner networks. For 2017, the plans are not only to follow-up with those amazing women but also to extend the network and open the doors for more female founders and leaders.
FinLeap is strongly supporting the network, with the purpose to contribute in enabling women in the Tech and Finance sector and the strong hope, that in the future, it will be standard for Fintech, Tech, and Finance companies to have a balanced amount of men and women in their driver seats.
For more information, follow Fintech Ladies Europe on Twitter or check out the website.