Empowering Women in Fintech Podcast Insights

[Music] it's true across the globe women aren't as prosperous as men gender inequality is a pressing moral issue but we forget it has massive economic implications if you were to put all of the women who don't have access to formal Financial Services in one place they would make up the third largest country in the world that means an entire population without bank accounts credit cards or other tools you and I likely benefit from daily prosperity for women starts with inclusive policies products and people around the globe and the investment to make it happen welcome to the making Finance work for women podcast my name is Sonia Kelly and I lead Women's World banking's proprietary research Vision join me as I speak with change makers around the globe to deconstruct the Social and economic exclusion women face we'll discover new evidence together and drive action to accelerate women's economic empowerment because a leg up isn't a handout it's a global game changer [Music] [Music] thank you so much for tuning in to the making Finance work for women podcast which is now streaming on YouTube and available wherever you get your podcasts I'm your host Sonia Kelly if you are listening on YouTube you'll be able to find additional insights and resources that are linked in the description of the video below before we get started I'd like to give a special shout out to the sponsor of the making Finance work forwomen podcast which is ernston Young LLP ey is a global leader working across Assurance Consulting law strategy tax and transactions ey teams ask better questions to find new answers for the complex issues facing our world today you can visit their website at ey.com to explore their latest insights and services now let's jump into the show so for those who aren't familiar fintech which is what we're talking about today is the application of technology to financial institutions and today's examples include Mobile Banking digital payment systems cryptocurrency other app-based Financial Services access and use and we'll be talking about ones beyond that too I want to jump right into an example of a fintech company so that you have some context for our discussion so I want to talk about um a company that won our fintech Innovation Challenge last year in 2023 and that company is pay code now pay code is an africa-based biometric digital identity and Payments Technology Company and it simplifies Financial transactions in rural areas especially by utilizing tablet scanning technology and people's fingerprints to issue them with smart cards in just a few minutes now with these cards individual individuals are able to use these cards um and point of sale technology or point of system technology to conduct Financial transactions even offline there are funds that are stored on the card not in a bank which enables offline transactions which is really really good if you live in a place with low connectivity so let's look at one of pay code's customers in Zambia and her name is Lisa you can actually find all of this on their website if you want to learn more about Lisa um Lisa is a farmer in Zambia and she was just one of the almost one billion women in the world without a form of identification and one of about a billion women in the world world that don't have adequate Financial Services um she lives in deeply rural Zambia meaning that she um she didn't have a form of ID she didn't have a bank account and even if she did she would not have been able to afford the fees that came with traditional banking there's no mobile connectivity in her area so mobile money is not an option for her and that's money that you might use using your cell phone through the mobile network operator you may have heard of mobile money services like Mesa um or um or others from airel or orang or other other companies so instead Lisa was keeping the money that she earned from selling her produce at home which would sometimes get stolen in fact there's research that shows that money kept in cash um 22% of it is lost annually compared to money that's kept in a formal financial institution so this company pay code came into to Zambia and was able to utilize Lisa's fingerprints and issue her a smart card that functioned as a debit and credit card also functioned as a payment Channel also functioned as a checking and savings account and a lot more and now she's able to control her finances with the help of something that everyone has which is a fingerprint bypassing the need for an ID and while her community doesn't have internet connectivity the agent she works with can make transactions um using her card and this is validated with a confirmation that can be delivered via Bluetooth to her phone if internet connectivity does come and then the transactions reconcile um once the agent gets back online so like I said you can check out Lisa's story and others on the pay code website now for Lisa and others fintech solves a number of problems and those include time poverty we know that women spend more time at home than men focusing on domestic tasks and um dependent care there also income challenges that women have and so Services need to be inexpensive they can't have like a really high touch with like a um a teller that's paid a lot of money for example women also have limitations to Mobility they're less likely to go far from their homes so they have to be able to access their financial services nearby which sometimes means in the palm of their hand women are more likely to be thin fil customers customers that don't have a lot of information that's out there about them um and that's always a challenge especially for getting credit um and then there's unconscious human bias at play as well and fintech solves some of the unconscious human bias challenges by applying um machine learning or artificial intelligence so this is all exciting but the fintech industry is shockingly male-dominated um let me give you some MERS here Forbes says that only 30% of the fintech workforce is made up of women and only 8% of fintech leadership roles are held by women women and stunningly only 1.5% of fintech Founders are women and they receive only 1% of funding so those numbers that I just shared got lower and lower and lower and lower to receiving only 1% of of funding and we can't ignore the press that fintech companies are all also getting um as part of the broader tech industry right now we're hearing words again like bubble and layoffs and overvalued and so ftech has a crisis of women's leadership and also maybe approaching an inflection point as well I think that's enough context from me let me introduce Our Guest for today Nicole casperson began her career in journalism she was focusing on finance and noticed the lack of diverse female voices and she's now the founder and CEO of fintech is fem which is a media company delivering bi-weekly newsletters highlighting fintech news analysis and strategies ensuring diverse voices have a platform she's a regular Forbes contributor on fintech inclusion she also teaches financial management at The Parson School of Design and she's a sought-after speaker having presented at money 2020 and the Women's World banking Summit in Mumbai and that was the making Finance work for women Summit in fact and that's where I first met her she's recognized as a inspiring woman in fintech by NYC fintech women and Nicole is working on her first book fintech feminists welcome Nicole Nicole I'm a loyal reader of your newsletter too thank you so much for coming on the podcast oh what an introduction way to go and thank you so much Sonia for having me and so excited to be here I always love working and collaborating with Women's World Banking and being involved in the work you do so thank you for having this and invting absolutely absolutely um I'd love to start by asking you a little bit about your background before we jump into the more kind of heavy-hitting questions I mentioned in your bio that you noticed the lack of diverse female voices in your industry and I'd love to hear a little bit more about that and how it led you to what you're doing now yeah absolutely so yeah my background is in journalism I grew up as a finance reporter at a number of different trade Publications and over the years I really found that not only were the industries that I I was writing about financial services largely male-dominated but so were the news rooms I was sitting in uh the last Newsroom being the I was the only woman person of color and person under the age of 30 at the time uh in The Newsroom which really shaped the type of stories and the type of narrative we were sharing and telling right um and when you're when you create news stories that only cater to one kind of person that perpetuates a cycle of financial services catering their products to only one type of person I.E not the global majority right um so I founded fintech isfm I I left my traditional reporting trajectory to start fintech isfm because I learned over the years that The Newsroom was actually the direct source for why so many women had false narratives around money in business kind of ingrained into our psyches right we're told women don't like to invest or you know you've heard these silly stories right or women aren't good with at math or women just don't care about managing money while we know literally none of those are true and completely inaccurate narratives there when you see it in the news all the time it's it it becomes normalized to us to our culture so I knew I needed to step in and say you know what women in financial services there are so many INSP iring women building in this space that people do not know about uh I'm a journalist I can create a platform to where we are talking about these women and what they're building every single day I am never bored I am never out of news there are so many women there's no pipeline problem there's no shortage of incredible women building in the space let me tell you I'm crazy busy and so I have plenty to cover um and that's and that's the market opportunity I saw I mean and the data is there as well you shared all of those sta it's the same for the news media uh women are half the global population but represent only a quarter of media stories told and then if you want to go down to even women's stories centered around them being showcased as Business Leaders that shrinks to even 15% and that number has not moved in a decade so but what women are mostly represented in news media are as Homemakers right at 98% nothing wrong with that except for it's just just not an accurate picture it's really more of a yes and situation where majority of women are not only Business Leaders in their homes and managing their finances but also are the Homemakers as well so they're really doing both jobs um but anyway so that's that's why I founded ftech as F because I do believe that women's stories are front page news and not saved for just the women section or just the diversity section of a paper well and despite the fact that you are not uh like at a lack for work and you are seeing these stories everywhere only a small percentage of venture capital funding goes to women lead startups like at 1% right um so like what what do you say to venture capital companies how can they tackle this this disparity and create a more Equitable funding environment yeah I think media literacy is really important I it's it's a huge P por for why I started fintech is fem because you can't be what you can't see right um and so I really approach it in three parts so first we have to amplify her story The More We amplify women's Stories the more that they're actually seen and the more that Venture capitalists the more that people looking to fund these people can actually see that they are out there instead of just the kind of narrow circles that maybe they they live in right we want to diversify and expand those networks and expand those mindsets so that really H that's the power of Storytelling and the power of a media platform and a newsletter and I've seen that change happen in real time women have featured in my newsletter have secured funding right have have spoken on my stage and gotten that firstr investor and that is huge so I think media literacy and paying attention to who we are listening to you know questioning when an article from a reputable publication only has all male sources questioning what does that really mean why why are what kind of narrative are they showing me of what they truly care about when they don't diverse take the time to diversify the type of sources and the type of startups that they're putting in front of into the news and into the world because that's what Venture capitalists are seeing so there's there's one um I think a lot of that stems from you have to do an individual assessment organize and then that turns into policy right that's like the ripple effect in we want to go on so as an individual what are you doing in your daytoday to ensure that you are diversifying the type of media that you consume diversifying the type of stories that you're paying attention to right um diversifying what does your LinkedIn Network look like what does your friend group look like um a lot of the stories of the women featured in my upcoming book they share just what a valuable resource social capital is when you as one of my favorite quotes in the book from L deiss the former CEO voro will say when you're not eating rice pudding every day when you're diversifying your pallet and the The Economic Opportunity there when you can see that there's so much more Global majority to be served so that needs to happen on an individual level especially for people that are funding these startups they have to actively look outside of their networks they have to be intentionally decide hey you know what I'm going to not partake in pattern matching right um just the practice of being drawn to people like you and only wanting to fund people like you I'm going to see the value in the fact that Innovation lives in diversity but dies in silos right um and understand that the data is there to Showcase that funding women and people of color and individuals that have come from these ad adversities that come from these diverse backgrounds is actually better for your bottom line there is all that there's also the emotional aspect of it too though right at the end of the day when you're funding these like early stage um uh startups it is more of you betting on the founder so what kind of self- evaluation on an individual level can you do to ensure you're checking your own biases now that you can only do so much as an individual which then goes to the organized section of the action items we need so once as as an individual you've done as much work to make sure your network is diverse and your your expansion and your eyeballs are on a wide breath of humans how are you bringing that same level and organizing with people in your community because without community and organizing together nothing's going to happen because we have to take those individual pieces and it has to create policy whether that's a policy at your company at your corporation whether that's a policy at your Venture Capital firm whether that's something as far as uh California governor Gavin Newsome right signed Senate Bill 54 the fair investment practices by investment advisors which is like a new diversity reporting law that requires VC companies with ties to California to annually report the demographic information of the founding team members at their invested companies right that's type of transparency that's the kind of policies we want because that law is going to make that data incredibly transparent for the inequitable funding distribution and what happens in California can California is kind of a benchmark state right where that can be expanded on a national level you know how how do we get those kind of policies in place you have to work as an individual organize as a community and then advocate for policy and policy change whether in the Congressional level like that law in California or at a corporate level so those are the three steps I would take yeah and that those are all things that like any individual listening to this podcast can do educate themselves so that they can be aware of their own biases when it comes to decisions they're making um in their sphere of influence and then engage with a community that's Act L exploring these these topics I really like that it's quite actionable yeah like to keep it actionable I've noticed that about you um I want to talk about one specific fintech product for a second and that is wallets because wallets have doubled in usage globally over the past five years um and just for those who are listening um I'm not talking about like the wallet you keep in your pocket but rather a digital wallet um that you might put money into money might sit there in the wallet but then you also can use it to pay you can store value in in that Mobile Wallet um and so it's stunning to me how much usage of wallets has grown doubled in the past five years um it seems like there are a number of fintech companies a lot of fintech companies that are kind of building up around this trend um and so I wonder especially for women in under Serv D markets um how can new fintech companies leverage this growth in wallets to further close the financial inclusion Gap kind of starting with payments as an onramp to financial inclusion yeah I think the interesting element about wallets and it's somewhat similar to a lot of the technological advancements happening AI as well which I'm I'm sure we're going to get into but um it really is all about how much how much can we expand the digital footprint of users in these markets that we don't actually know that much about right um because the thing is is that when you're gonna as Women's World banking knows if you're going going to serve the global majority then you're going to need to use a much different set of Standards data points um and get a little creative on those alternative data points that you're going to use to be able to provide them the financial services that they need so I think what is interesting about wallets specifically to your point is that one you know getting physical things is actually like harder these days than having things on a phone or an Android de device which most most humans across the world have these devices um but the really interesting part to me is how can we leverage these wallets as a tool to really better understand user data and understand user Behavior what is the behavioral Finance element of it cool like we understand payments what are we tracking what data points are we tracking about those users and how they are transitioning payments over so that we can get a better picture of who they are and not some blurry like here are five data points that are going to tell me if you're good enough for a loan right um instead how do we get a much clearer picture by extracting far more data points that we can because we have the advanced technology to do so uh to be able to serve more people that's where I see the um like the the opportunity in that space in leveraging digital wallets I it sometimes here in the states I like don't know what we're doing like I know Google's like messing around with digital digital wallets they like recently got a new announcement out that frankly I haven't looked at yet but um in that case it seems a little like Bell and whistly but when we come when we think about it for markets outside of the US and markets that really need these kinds of um Technologies I see a lot of that potential because even someone like the the users of pay code right like huge fan of pay code love that you brought them up Gabe ruhan is like an incredible human um the CEO of pay code and um how do we get a digital wallet to someone like a pay code user right who physically doesn't have an IDE I see wallets almost like another extension of how can we help people that haven't historically had IDs and don't have access to these physical things leverage these these digital wallets but we also have to have the technology to uh make sure that everyone has the capability to even access those and now a word from our sponsor ey applauds Women's World Bank 45-year Legacy empowering women through financial inclusion together we have a common Vision to build a better Financial Services industry one that is stronger fairer and more sustainable find out more on ey.com yeah that's true I mean women are much less likely to have a smartphone exactly they're much less likely to use mobile internet something like 27% less likely to use mobile internet than men are and so is that you're totally right there's that basic infrastructure component that you know we can't even talk about financial inclusion until we talk about infrastructure inclusion and um digital Readiness of individual consumers yeah exactly exactly and I think that'll happen the more we see uh women leading in the space right because at at the end of the day our universe because it's been largely do a male-dominated space especially in the leadership and the product design it's it's a lot of the effects that we're seeing now in the inadequacy of the financial services industry to serve women right um because when you have products that are designed by one kind of human right largely men then that as much as they think they're building anything gender neutral you're really not right uh gender neutral doesn't really exist if it's if a product or a service or a whole industry right is built off of a foundation of one type of person's belief or or Viewpoint of how it should look and what it should be like and that's why we have these like discrepancies around women not feeling like the financial services industry sees them acknowledges them understands them because the product has always been designed in One Direction when we need it to be designed in multiple directions to reach as many people as possible so hi hopes hi hopes for as we see more women uh leading in the space and and building yes yeah we like to say that if you design for men you are going to reach men but if you design for women you're more likely to reach everyone because you're designing for the person that's less connected that's less likely to have an ID it's less likely to have a digital device and you're thinking of kind of that lower that lower bar of inclusion right it's basic it's it's basic product inclusion exactly L right it's the same with when you know it's the curb cut effect right which curbs in the sidewalk were originally designed for uh disabled people right so folks in wheelchairs or folks that need those things but now everyone uses the curbs in the in or the cuts in the in the sidewalks and the curbs women with you know people with strollers right um even people that ride skateboards or scooters so um or if you're like pushing a anything with a wheel those things are helpful so when you design for the margins you get the center for free I love that um you mentioned AI machine learning we have to talk about it we're not we're not allowed to not talk about it um obviously tell me what you're worried about tell me what you're excited about with AI machine learning oh my goodness um so many things so I one of the things I think is the most exciting part about AI so as a finance reporter for the last decade I can feel like an AI hipster if you will because I'm sure a lot of us feel this way because you know AI has been around for a very long time it's so interesting to see the way it has entered culture Consciousness now um I think I would love to get to a place as a huge goal of my book is to get people talking about fintech as much as we're talking about AI um the things that I find very exciting about AI is its ability to expand the knowledge we have and the digital footprint we have on people right so the more data points kind of similar to what I was saying about wallets the more data points that we have on people the clearer picture we have on who they are the better we understand their behaviors the better we can actually provide them with financial services Bing Bang Boom right now the thing about it is kind of twofold on a more infrastructure scale we have to get to a place and I know fintech companies working on this one is called entropy which is founded by an incredible woman uh her name is Nara danan and um her company is really focused on making the data connectivity between large incumbent financial institutions and startup fintech companies really be able to talk to each other right because as we know or may know a um large challenge of the the fin traditional financial services slbank and fintech collaboration is the fact that most incumbent Banks weren't designed to speak nice to technology outside of their own original infrastructure so we need that that update right um but what ends up happening is like you can have all the data points but if it's not clean if it's not um actually like organized in a way to where it's usable then it becomes almost more work than it is worth and then we won't end up using that data and it Falls and forget this awesome technology that we have to do all the things that we've talked about so I think ensuring that we have incredibly you know cleaned up uh thorough data that isn't you know super Rife with the biases that we already see in society today is is a huge element um that's where some of the worry in AI if you will comes so um the thing about every technological or Finance evolution we've seen in our society um at least since I've been alive is the pattern of every single one being led uh predominantly by men and each Evolution ending in crises right so bank failures global economic disasters um you know we we just kind of had that experience with the crypto space and you know it was a new space but at the same time while its goal was to and is still is to be able to expand Financial Services to more people um and it still has that capability along the way in the last few years the the listening the voice of who is leading the conversation around cryptocurrency fell on the same people on the same type of people right I.E basically like super rich white men right uh who didn't really care about crypto and blockchain Technologies original goal which is to serve the underserved so because those voices largely took over that space I mean look what happened we saw a a the same pattern in that um that bro culture if you will really kind of lost the wind and lost the real um the like wholesomeness and what is capable of this technology I don't want to see the same thing happen in Ai and what's scary is that especially in the media landscape we you're kind of already seeing it um I think we're being a little more cautious this time around um because AI I think is almost is just easier for people to wrap their heads around than blockchain technology which yeah and um and we're just seeing it's been around longer literally it's just been around longer so we're seeing an advancements that make more sense to people so I think a big piece of that is leaders in the space to wrap this up with a bat need to um be very cautious of the type of researchers and the type of people leading the AI discussion that they're listening to so let's make sure that we're not just listening to you know the New York times's list of who's who's in AI which is all 12 which is a list of a dozen men I rewrote that list for them with a dozen women in AI that they could be paying attention to instead right um so that's something I want us to be really cautious of right like let's listen to you know Dr Fifi Lee Dr latata Sweeney Sweeney Dr uh uh Daphne kler just Google incredible women in AI they are out there and Women's World banking Google Women's World banking too because we have some great resources on AI machine learning that you can you can check out on our website and I'll link to them below as well yeah exactly so listen to them and let's for once let a different group of people lead the technology Revolution and lead the lead the narrative and let's see how things are come out differently for us yeah so let's talk about consumer protection then as like a natural follow on um women are more likely than men to say that they value privacy that's a big concern of of women's and then they're also more likely to say they want to talk to a human when something goes wrong um and have a really effective efficient redress process so when we're thinking about the world that you've just painted a picture of where um everybody's data is clean and it's easy to make decisions about them and we can build lots of um lowcost highly scalable financial services using AI machine learning where does Consumer Protection fit into that picture and how can women be part of that that conversation yeah I think I think um that's a that's an important part of literally everything because for I know for me as a reporter over the years I've been pretty bored with the narrative that consumer protection and regulation stifles Innovation I actually think that they are not mutually exclusive I mean luckily we you know have some folks in our Congressional you know Offices here in the states that recognize that um but to to your point I mean there is no there really is no advancing these Innovative Technologies unless we are protecting the people that it's meant to serve and if as long and we have to follow leaders and and policy leaders in the space who care more about protecting the consumer than and and less about protecting the status quo really um exactly so like maybe let's not dismantle the cfpb I use an acronym maybe let's not dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which is a government institution in the US um for those Ling internationally yeah yes and and and you know speaking to America specifically which is what I know um in terms of Regulation but I think there's a lot of ways we can do this I think we could be a lot more collaborative in terms of uh how all of the stakeholders actually work together um and then there is a level of frankly patience that I think we could do a bit better at uh people get really really excited to move fast on these technological uh advancements and I get it we have to we do there is like a level of urgency because the wealth gaps and the inadequacies of the financial services space are so huge but maybe instead of moving fast and breaking things we moved at a decent pace and protected our our end consumer which is the whole point of why we're all here right um so that for me comes with mostly a lot of like narrative shifts a lot of mindset shifts in terms of seeing regulation as a true partner in this as opposed to H this thing I have to deal with because laws you know it's maybe I can maybe I can actually fully follow what you know the house Financial Services committee is working on what is Maxine Waters up to right uh what are these Congressional humans at least here in the states working on and I know that happens I learned at Women's World banking just how advanced other countries are compared to the US when it comes to this um so Kudos um but that's that's for me what I would love to see more of is just uh the leaders in the business business sector especially in Venture Capital especially in um in these prominent CEOs and and Leadership roles that get so much press imagine how powerful it would be if leading figures like that just went out there and said you know what I'm so excited to work with Regulators to protect the consumer period instead of you know what I'm going to support someone who cares less about protecting the consumer and more about prot protecting my business because I need to protect my bottom line it's like so that's I think what we should be mindful of as Business Leaders is once again who who are you listening to who are you following and how can we get how can we organize and get more people to be open to speaking up to protect the consumer and not the status quo yeah and I loved your point about it not being a dichotomy between consumer protection and Innovation I think that's really good for for us to keep in mind um well just those calms alone would be just to add those calms alone think about it like the messaging alone you mentioned like women want that transparency they they want to know they're being protected seeing Business Leaders seeing Congress seeing these figures in the space straight up saying that that that's what that communication is what creates trust yeah I mean that's how Amazon got huge market share or one of the ways was people were like I want to make a return they said okay yeah great you don't even have to send it back to us we'll just credit your account and we'll just trust that you'll send the thing back to us and they were very consumer Centric beginning they got huge market share um I think it's a good example what how however you feel about Jeff Bezos and Amazon it's a really good example example of consumer protection and consumer Centric Services as well um I have two more questions for you the first is we haven't yet heard about your book and I would love to give you the floor to share a little bit a little bit about it and you peppered some names in throughout the conversation which I'm assuming are chapters in the book but I actually I would I can't wait to read it and I'd love to hear a little sneak preview of course on so the book fintech feminists is essentially about women's integral role in shaping the future of our economy to be more sustainable and to be more Equitable so think about every major Financial challenge that is out there I wish I tackled every single one of them but I did my best to tackle as many as possible from the student loan crisis to the retirement crisis to climate change to health care to um the just sheer lack of financial services catered to women let's just start there that's a that's a huge portion of the book um but what really excited me the most about the book is really being able to leverage the hundreds of interviews that I've had over my years as a reporter and finally put into the you know history right like a recorded version of History which is what a book is and show that women aren't only here right now building some of the most incredible um and Innovative companies in the fintech space that are serving the underserved the the historically ignored they're creating those opportunities for them building successful and profitable companies that are also sustainable and doing good they're able to do all of that and they do all that in spite of a system that provides them only 1% of enter Capital funding that provides them the the least amount of resources so they're they're scrappier than their male counterparts they're and they're more they're able to lean into their vulnerability more they showcase characteristics of great leaders in ways that you don't typically see in the news media right um so a lot I have about there's I need to do a recount because I there's like about 40 profiles but when I count you know women that are featured in the book or you know have moments or quotes in it it really is probably around closer to 50 um I fit as many as I could uh in in 350 pages but you'll get to really uh learn the blueprint for How To Succeed as an entrepreneur as a business leader in the fintech space by following these women's narratives and when you follow their narratives not only do you get to create kind of circling back to the top of this conversation you as an individual you get to start working on your own career and your own startup and the things that you want to work on and using these women's insights including marielen is karian the president of women's world banking uh she has such a fabulous chap in the book I I love it so much can't wait for you to read it and um so you get to learn from their experiences and learn from their inspiring stories and apply it to yourself and then you realize you're not so alone right then step from an individual level Next Step you get to create a community right these women are have been in your shoes they have felt what you felt but they've decided to do something about it and they're going to inspire you to do something about it too so and then on top of all of that they're going to show you how to lead didn't succeed in this digital Finance Revolution so it's just like you get a little bit of everything you're getting research you're getting personal story and narrative you're getting uh blueprints for Success uh yeah and I actually think um Gabe the ruhan the CEO of pay code one of the one of the few men who has made a cameo in the book but you know also also one of the few men who got a mention in this podcast along all the women that we've discussed today right right but you'll get stories from women you know prolific women like Sally cotek the CEO and founder of elvest kind of the first out the gate to create a a a fintech uh platform for women by women um you just trailblazing figures like Angel Rich who's the founder and CEO of credit rich and you know one of the and is the first uh woman with a blackowned Neo Bank um which is just huge mileston so not only are women here right now building these incredible things but I also take a moment to make sure that we honor the women of the past so there have been so many women that have really shaped the digital Finance infrastructure that their stories often get buried and we don't often hear about them in our history books I wanted to make sure that before you meet you know 40 to 50 trailblazing figures you knew who built the rails of our financial services and our technology infrastructure to begin with a lot of them are trailblazing incredible women in our history women like Maggie Walker who was the first woman to own and operate a blackowned bank in America um women like Grace Grace Hopper right who uh literally built the coding infrastructure um that Banks run on today so there's aah lovely right is like literally our America's first coder so so the next time women listening to this the next time if you think that this space isn't for you honey we built it we built this space okay it's just along the way our voices got buried but we're taking it back so um and that's what the book does in many ways so excited for you to to read it and I think you'll really love it I can't wait and we'll put a link um in the uh in the chat Below on the YouTube page for a link to um to pre-order the book for those of you who are listening um and okay so I have one last question which is considering the rapid changes in the fintech landscape I mean it's moving so quickly what kinds of steps and let's just stick to like one or two what one or two steps should industry leaders take to ensure that inclusion remains at the Forefront of innovation and growth um I think uh one of my other favorite quotes from my book comes from Sarah Levy and she's the CEO of betterment one of the largest independent uh investment platforms here in the states and she really always says in the book what gets measured gets done so at the end of the day yes we need the individual yes we need the community we need the policy but as Leaders you have to to intentionally put measurements in place because at the end of the day if you don't set a there is if you don't set a Target if you don't set a goal then how are you supposed to hit something that you don't even put into place to measure um that I think would be the number one step is to get ridiculously intentional about it uh know that this isn't like some subsection of your company that is a nice to have and really good for or when women's history month and all these you know months come up but instead is an integral role of your business Foundation um once you see that at the end of the day if you prioritize inclusion and diverse perspectives in your business particularly from the beginning I've spoken to Industry leaders and like startup CEOs who are like I'll PR prioritize diversity and inclusion after the first three years I'm like oh no no no it's just get harder from there I'm going need you to to focus on it at the gate who is your co-founder who is your who are the first 10 hires you know if you were to ask someone like Serena Williams who is Serena Williams and the and also an investor through uh Serena Ventures she specifically has said one of her first things she looks at from a Founder is who are your first 10 hires and is it a diverse roster because if it's not then I don't think the product you're creating is going to really resonate with a lot of people because how could it if you if the leaders in the space don't represent the experiences of the audience that you're after or the the consumer that you're after so I would start there what gets measured gets done that's great that's a different direction than I thought you were going to go and probably more meaningful because I thought you were going to say like innovate and you know like something those Buzz all the buzzwords but getting back to basics and saying set a Target collect the data and measure your progress against that Target report it to the board report it to your investors creates accountability and also forces inclusivity in a way that's as you said like just baked into the fabric of the institution it's great exactly exactly and once when you do that what's so important too and I talked about a bit in my book is you know we got to get the women leaders these spaces out of these silos um there's it's it is not as someone who's been in that those positions of being the only in the room that is not a fun place to be and so for for women you know wanting to take initiative if you any and another great quote from my book from Asia Bradley an angel super angel investor but she says if anytime she sees herself as the only woman in the room she Mak sure she changes it whatever that takes um who does she got to talk to what boss who does she have to hire because operating in silos is not how we as women grow and expand and get better we have to support each other unequivocally like no questions asked fund each other's businesses amplify each other's careers for me it's writing I use the f is platform to write as many stories as I can every week about women leading in the space um so that's that's the other element is um just make sure you're not operating in a silo and surround yourself with Incredible women in these spaces because there are so many and if you don't know any come read my book read my newsletter you'll be introduced to new ones every week thanks Nicole and yeah I would highly recommend the newsletter thank you so much for joining us today I really enjoyed our conversation um I've got some great nuggets that are coming out of this um that I I can't wait to share with people tonight around the dinner table honestly this is like practical advice and um and also like good insights on the industry so thank you ah yes no thank you excit I want to be at your dinner table so it's a good one next year next year in Mumbai you know that's right that's right exactly thank you thanks I'm so grateful to Nicole for joining us like I said I'm coming away with just some some really um practical ways that are not scary or intimidating practical ways that I as an individual can think about um how to advance women in leadership how to consider women customers more more intelligently and um intentionally and so I hope you're coming away inspired too if you work for a fintech um you can actually take a six minute quiz that we have on online on Women's World banking's website it's called the fintech diversity scorecard you can just search for that you can take a six-minute quiz to find out how you're doing um and whether you're doing enough to make a difference um you can also stay on the lookout for Nicole's book fintech feminists which is coming out in in October you can pre-order it right now on amazon.com we'll put the link in the in the chat below um if you're looking on YouTube um and if you found today's discussion valuable please please please don't forget to subscribe to rate US to leave a review on your favorite podcast platform we're kind of new on all the platforms um it's a risk because we Diversified our platforms and it means we catch fewer people on each one um even though we're growing quickly and your feedback really matters in this time in the development in our podcast so um please please let us know what you think and help us to bring you more content that resonates with you you can stay engaged stay informed and I look forward to connecting with you in our next episode on September 19th thank you so much [Music]

[Music] it&#39;s true across the globe women aren&#39;t as prosperous as men gender inequality is a pressing moral issue but we forget it has massive economic implications if you were to put all of the women who don&#39;t have access to formal Financial Services in one place they would make up the third largest country in the world that means an entire population without bank accounts credit cards or other tools you and I likely benefit from daily prosperity for women starts with inclusive policies products and people around the globe and the investment to make it happen welcome to the making Finance work for women podcast my name is Sonia Kelly and I lead Women&#39;s World banking&#39;s proprietary research Vision join me as I speak with change makers around the globe to deconstruct the Social and economic exclusion women face we&#39;ll discover new evidence together and drive action to accelerate women&#39;s economic empowerment because a leg up isn&#39;t a handout it&#39;s a global game changer [Music] [Music] thank you so much for tuning in to the making Finance work for women podcast which is now streaming on YouTube and available wherever you get your podcasts I&#39;m your host Sonia Kelly if you are listening on YouTube you&#39;ll be able to find additional insights and resources that are linked in the description of the video below before we get started I&#39;d like to give a special shout out to the sponsor of the making Finance work forwomen podcast which is ernston Young LLP ey is a global leader working across Assurance Consulting law strategy tax and transactions ey teams ask better questions to find new answers for the complex issues facing our world today you can visit their website at ey.com to explore their latest insights and services now let&#39;s jump into the show so for those who aren&#39;t familiar fintech which is what we&#39;re talking about today is the application of technology to financial institutions and today&#39;s examples include Mobile Banking digital payment systems cryptocurrency other app-based Financial Services access and use and we&#39;ll be talking about ones beyond that too I want to jump right into an example of a fintech company so that you have some context for our discussion so I want to talk about um a company that won our fintech Innovation Challenge last year in 2023 and that company is pay code now pay code is an africa-based biometric digital identity and Payments Technology Company and it simplifies Financial transactions in rural areas especially by utilizing tablet scanning technology and people&#39;s fingerprints to issue them with smart cards in just a few minutes now with these cards individual individuals are able to use these cards um and point of sale technology or point of system technology to conduct Financial transactions even offline there are funds that are stored on the card not in a bank which enables offline transactions which is really really good if you live in a place with low connectivity so let&#39;s look at one of pay code&#39;s customers in Zambia and her name is Lisa you can actually find all of this on their website if you want to learn more about Lisa um Lisa is a farmer in Zambia and she was just one of the almost one billion women in the world without a form of identification and one of about a billion women in the world world that don&#39;t have adequate Financial Services um she lives in deeply rural Zambia meaning that she um she didn&#39;t have a form of ID she didn&#39;t have a bank account and even if she did she would not have been able to afford the fees that came with traditional banking there&#39;s no mobile connectivity in her area so mobile money is not an option for her and that&#39;s money that you might use using your cell phone through the mobile network operator you may have heard of mobile money services like Mesa um or um or others from airel or orang or other other companies so instead Lisa was keeping the money that she earned from selling her produce at home which would sometimes get stolen in fact there&#39;s research that shows that money kept in cash um 22% of it is lost annually compared to money that&#39;s kept in a formal financial institution so this company pay code came into to Zambia and was able to utilize Lisa&#39;s fingerprints and issue her a smart card that functioned as a debit and credit card also functioned as a payment Channel also functioned as a checking and savings account and a lot more and now she&#39;s able to control her finances with the help of something that everyone has which is a fingerprint bypassing the need for an ID and while her community doesn&#39;t have internet connectivity the agent she works with can make transactions um using her card and this is validated with a confirmation that can be delivered via Bluetooth to her phone if internet connectivity does come and then the transactions reconcile um once the agent gets back online so like I said you can check out Lisa&#39;s story and others on the pay code website now for Lisa and others fintech solves a number of problems and those include time poverty we know that women spend more time at home than men focusing on domestic tasks and um dependent care there also income challenges that women have and so Services need to be inexpensive they can&#39;t have like a really high touch with like a um a teller that&#39;s paid a lot of money for example women also have limitations to Mobility they&#39;re less likely to go far from their homes so they have to be able to access their financial services nearby which sometimes means in the palm of their hand women are more likely to be thin fil customers customers that don&#39;t have a lot of information that&#39;s out there about them um and that&#39;s always a challenge especially for getting credit um and then there&#39;s unconscious human bias at play as well and fintech solves some of the unconscious human bias challenges by applying um machine learning or artificial intelligence so this is all exciting but the fintech industry is shockingly male-dominated um let me give you some MERS here Forbes says that only 30% of the fintech workforce is made up of women and only 8% of fintech leadership roles are held by women women and stunningly only 1.5% of fintech Founders are women and they receive only 1% of funding so those numbers that I just shared got lower and lower and lower and lower to receiving only 1% of of funding and we can&#39;t ignore the press that fintech companies are all also getting um as part of the broader tech industry right now we&#39;re hearing words again like bubble and layoffs and overvalued and so ftech has a crisis of women&#39;s leadership and also maybe approaching an inflection point as well I think that&#39;s enough context from me let me introduce Our Guest for today Nicole casperson began her career in journalism she was focusing on finance and noticed the lack of diverse female voices and she&#39;s now the founder and CEO of fintech is fem which is a media company delivering bi-weekly newsletters highlighting fintech news analysis and strategies ensuring diverse voices have a platform she&#39;s a regular Forbes contributor on fintech inclusion she also teaches financial management at The Parson School of Design and she&#39;s a sought-after speaker having presented at money 2020 and the Women&#39;s World banking Summit in Mumbai and that was the making Finance work for women Summit in fact and that&#39;s where I first met her she&#39;s recognized as a inspiring woman in fintech by NYC fintech women and Nicole is working on her first book fintech feminists welcome Nicole Nicole I&#39;m a loyal reader of your newsletter too thank you so much for coming on the podcast oh what an introduction way to go and thank you so much Sonia for having me and so excited to be here I always love working and collaborating with Women&#39;s World Banking and being involved in the work you do so thank you for having this and invting absolutely absolutely um I&#39;d love to start by asking you a little bit about your background before we jump into the more kind of heavy-hitting questions I mentioned in your bio that you noticed the lack of diverse female voices in your industry and I&#39;d love to hear a little bit more about that and how it led you to what you&#39;re doing now yeah absolutely so yeah my background is in journalism I grew up as a finance reporter at a number of different trade Publications and over the years I really found that not only were the industries that I I was writing about financial services largely male-dominated but so were the news rooms I was sitting in uh the last Newsroom being the I was the only woman person of color and person under the age of 30 at the time uh in The Newsroom which really shaped the type of stories and the type of narrative we were sharing and telling right um and when you&#39;re when you create news stories that only cater to one kind of person that perpetuates a cycle of financial services catering their products to only one type of person I.E not the global majority right um so I founded fintech isfm I I left my traditional reporting trajectory to start fintech isfm because I learned over the years that The Newsroom was actually the direct source for why so many women had false narratives around money in business kind of ingrained into our psyches right we&#39;re told women don&#39;t like to invest or you know you&#39;ve heard these silly stories right or women aren&#39;t good with at math or women just don&#39;t care about managing money while we know literally none of those are true and completely inaccurate narratives there when you see it in the news all the time it&#39;s it it becomes normalized to us to our culture so I knew I needed to step in and say you know what women in financial services there are so many INSP iring women building in this space that people do not know about uh I&#39;m a journalist I can create a platform to where we are talking about these women and what they&#39;re building every single day I am never bored I am never out of news there are so many women there&#39;s no pipeline problem there&#39;s no shortage of incredible women building in the space let me tell you I&#39;m crazy busy and so I have plenty to cover um and that&#39;s and that&#39;s the market opportunity I saw I mean and the data is there as well you shared all of those sta it&#39;s the same for the news media uh women are half the global population but represent only a quarter of media stories told and then if you want to go down to even women&#39;s stories centered around them being showcased as Business Leaders that shrinks to even 15% and that number has not moved in a decade so but what women are mostly represented in news media are as Homemakers right at 98% nothing wrong with that except for it&#39;s just just not an accurate picture it&#39;s really more of a yes and situation where majority of women are not only Business Leaders in their homes and managing their finances but also are the Homemakers as well so they&#39;re really doing both jobs um but anyway so that&#39;s that&#39;s why I founded ftech as F because I do believe that women&#39;s stories are front page news and not saved for just the women section or just the diversity section of a paper well and despite the fact that you are not uh like at a lack for work and you are seeing these stories everywhere only a small percentage of venture capital funding goes to women lead startups like at 1% right um so like what what do you say to venture capital companies how can they tackle this this disparity and create a more Equitable funding environment yeah I think media literacy is really important I it&#39;s it&#39;s a huge P por for why I started fintech is fem because you can&#39;t be what you can&#39;t see right um and so I really approach it in three parts so first we have to amplify her story The More We amplify women&#39;s Stories the more that they&#39;re actually seen and the more that Venture capitalists the more that people looking to fund these people can actually see that they are out there instead of just the kind of narrow circles that maybe they they live in right we want to diversify and expand those networks and expand those mindsets so that really H that&#39;s the power of Storytelling and the power of a media platform and a newsletter and I&#39;ve seen that change happen in real time women have featured in my newsletter have secured funding right have have spoken on my stage and gotten that firstr investor and that is huge so I think media literacy and paying attention to who we are listening to you know questioning when an article from a reputable publication only has all male sources questioning what does that really mean why why are what kind of narrative are they showing me of what they truly care about when they don&#39;t diverse take the time to diversify the type of sources and the type of startups that they&#39;re putting in front of into the news and into the world because that&#39;s what Venture capitalists are seeing so there&#39;s there&#39;s one um I think a lot of that stems from you have to do an individual assessment organize and then that turns into policy right that&#39;s like the ripple effect in we want to go on so as an individual what are you doing in your daytoday to ensure that you are diversifying the type of media that you consume diversifying the type of stories that you&#39;re paying attention to right um diversifying what does your LinkedIn Network look like what does your friend group look like um a lot of the stories of the women featured in my upcoming book they share just what a valuable resource social capital is when you as one of my favorite quotes in the book from L deiss the former CEO voro will say when you&#39;re not eating rice pudding every day when you&#39;re diversifying your pallet and the The Economic Opportunity there when you can see that there&#39;s so much more Global majority to be served so that needs to happen on an individual level especially for people that are funding these startups they have to actively look outside of their networks they have to be intentionally decide hey you know what I&#39;m going to not partake in pattern matching right um just the practice of being drawn to people like you and only wanting to fund people like you I&#39;m going to see the value in the fact that Innovation lives in diversity but dies in silos right um and understand that the data is there to Showcase that funding women and people of color and individuals that have come from these ad adversities that come from these diverse backgrounds is actually better for your bottom line there is all that there&#39;s also the emotional aspect of it too though right at the end of the day when you&#39;re funding these like early stage um uh startups it is more of you betting on the founder so what kind of self- evaluation on an individual level can you do to ensure you&#39;re checking your own biases now that you can only do so much as an individual which then goes to the organized section of the action items we need so once as as an individual you&#39;ve done as much work to make sure your network is diverse and your your expansion and your eyeballs are on a wide breath of humans how are you bringing that same level and organizing with people in your community because without community and organizing together nothing&#39;s going to happen because we have to take those individual pieces and it has to create policy whether that&#39;s a policy at your company at your corporation whether that&#39;s a policy at your Venture Capital firm whether that&#39;s something as far as uh California governor Gavin Newsome right signed Senate Bill 54 the fair investment practices by investment advisors which is like a new diversity reporting law that requires VC companies with ties to California to annually report the demographic information of the founding team members at their invested companies right that&#39;s type of transparency that&#39;s the kind of policies we want because that law is going to make that data incredibly transparent for the inequitable funding distribution and what happens in California can California is kind of a benchmark state right where that can be expanded on a national level you know how how do we get those kind of policies in place you have to work as an individual organize as a community and then advocate for policy and policy change whether in the Congressional level like that law in California or at a corporate level so those are the three steps I would take yeah and that those are all things that like any individual listening to this podcast can do educate themselves so that they can be aware of their own biases when it comes to decisions they&#39;re making um in their sphere of influence and then engage with a community that&#39;s Act L exploring these these topics I really like that it&#39;s quite actionable yeah like to keep it actionable I&#39;ve noticed that about you um I want to talk about one specific fintech product for a second and that is wallets because wallets have doubled in usage globally over the past five years um and just for those who are listening um I&#39;m not talking about like the wallet you keep in your pocket but rather a digital wallet um that you might put money into money might sit there in the wallet but then you also can use it to pay you can store value in in that Mobile Wallet um and so it&#39;s stunning to me how much usage of wallets has grown doubled in the past five years um it seems like there are a number of fintech companies a lot of fintech companies that are kind of building up around this trend um and so I wonder especially for women in under Serv D markets um how can new fintech companies leverage this growth in wallets to further close the financial inclusion Gap kind of starting with payments as an onramp to financial inclusion yeah I think the interesting element about wallets and it&#39;s somewhat similar to a lot of the technological advancements happening AI as well which I&#39;m I&#39;m sure we&#39;re going to get into but um it really is all about how much how much can we expand the digital footprint of users in these markets that we don&#39;t actually know that much about right um because the thing is is that when you&#39;re gonna as Women&#39;s World banking knows if you&#39;re going going to serve the global majority then you&#39;re going to need to use a much different set of Standards data points um and get a little creative on those alternative data points that you&#39;re going to use to be able to provide them the financial services that they need so I think what is interesting about wallets specifically to your point is that one you know getting physical things is actually like harder these days than having things on a phone or an Android de device which most most humans across the world have these devices um but the really interesting part to me is how can we leverage these wallets as a tool to really better understand user data and understand user Behavior what is the behavioral Finance element of it cool like we understand payments what are we tracking what data points are we tracking about those users and how they are transitioning payments over so that we can get a better picture of who they are and not some blurry like here are five data points that are going to tell me if you&#39;re good enough for a loan right um instead how do we get a much clearer picture by extracting far more data points that we can because we have the advanced technology to do so uh to be able to serve more people that&#39;s where I see the um like the the opportunity in that space in leveraging digital wallets I it sometimes here in the states I like don&#39;t know what we&#39;re doing like I know Google&#39;s like messing around with digital digital wallets they like recently got a new announcement out that frankly I haven&#39;t looked at yet but um in that case it seems a little like Bell and whistly but when we come when we think about it for markets outside of the US and markets that really need these kinds of um Technologies I see a lot of that potential because even someone like the the users of pay code right like huge fan of pay code love that you brought them up Gabe ruhan is like an incredible human um the CEO of pay code and um how do we get a digital wallet to someone like a pay code user right who physically doesn&#39;t have an IDE I see wallets almost like another extension of how can we help people that haven&#39;t historically had IDs and don&#39;t have access to these physical things leverage these these digital wallets but we also have to have the technology to uh make sure that everyone has the capability to even access those and now a word from our sponsor ey applauds Women&#39;s World Bank 45-year Legacy empowering women through financial inclusion together we have a common Vision to build a better Financial Services industry one that is stronger fairer and more sustainable find out more on ey.com yeah that&#39;s true I mean women are much less likely to have a smartphone exactly they&#39;re much less likely to use mobile internet something like 27% less likely to use mobile internet than men are and so is that you&#39;re totally right there&#39;s that basic infrastructure component that you know we can&#39;t even talk about financial inclusion until we talk about infrastructure inclusion and um digital Readiness of individual consumers yeah exactly exactly and I think that&#39;ll happen the more we see uh women leading in the space right because at at the end of the day our universe because it&#39;s been largely do a male-dominated space especially in the leadership and the product design it&#39;s it&#39;s a lot of the effects that we&#39;re seeing now in the inadequacy of the financial services industry to serve women right um because when you have products that are designed by one kind of human right largely men then that as much as they think they&#39;re building anything gender neutral you&#39;re really not right uh gender neutral doesn&#39;t really exist if it&#39;s if a product or a service or a whole industry right is built off of a foundation of one type of person&#39;s belief or or Viewpoint of how it should look and what it should be like and that&#39;s why we have these like discrepancies around women not feeling like the financial services industry sees them acknowledges them understands them because the product has always been designed in One Direction when we need it to be designed in multiple directions to reach as many people as possible so hi hopes hi hopes for as we see more women uh leading in the space and and building yes yeah we like to say that if you design for men you are going to reach men but if you design for women you&#39;re more likely to reach everyone because you&#39;re designing for the person that&#39;s less connected that&#39;s less likely to have an ID it&#39;s less likely to have a digital device and you&#39;re thinking of kind of that lower that lower bar of inclusion right it&#39;s basic it&#39;s it&#39;s basic product inclusion exactly L right it&#39;s the same with when you know it&#39;s the curb cut effect right which curbs in the sidewalk were originally designed for uh disabled people right so folks in wheelchairs or folks that need those things but now everyone uses the curbs in the in or the cuts in the in the sidewalks and the curbs women with you know people with strollers right um even people that ride skateboards or scooters so um or if you&#39;re like pushing a anything with a wheel those things are helpful so when you design for the margins you get the center for free I love that um you mentioned AI machine learning we have to talk about it we&#39;re not we&#39;re not allowed to not talk about it um obviously tell me what you&#39;re worried about tell me what you&#39;re excited about with AI machine learning oh my goodness um so many things so I one of the things I think is the most exciting part about AI so as a finance reporter for the last decade I can feel like an AI hipster if you will because I&#39;m sure a lot of us feel this way because you know AI has been around for a very long time it&#39;s so interesting to see the way it has entered culture Consciousness now um I think I would love to get to a place as a huge goal of my book is to get people talking about fintech as much as we&#39;re talking about AI um the things that I find very exciting about AI is its ability to expand the knowledge we have and the digital footprint we have on people right so the more data points kind of similar to what I was saying about wallets the more data points that we have on people the clearer picture we have on who they are the better we understand their behaviors the better we can actually provide them with financial services Bing Bang Boom right now the thing about it is kind of twofold on a more infrastructure scale we have to get to a place and I know fintech companies working on this one is called entropy which is founded by an incredible woman uh her name is Nara danan and um her company is really focused on making the data connectivity between large incumbent financial institutions and startup fintech companies really be able to talk to each other right because as we know or may know a um large challenge of the the fin traditional financial services slbank and fintech collaboration is the fact that most incumbent Banks weren&#39;t designed to speak nice to technology outside of their own original infrastructure so we need that that update right um but what ends up happening is like you can have all the data points but if it&#39;s not clean if it&#39;s not um actually like organized in a way to where it&#39;s usable then it becomes almost more work than it is worth and then we won&#39;t end up using that data and it Falls and forget this awesome technology that we have to do all the things that we&#39;ve talked about so I think ensuring that we have incredibly you know cleaned up uh thorough data that isn&#39;t you know super Rife with the biases that we already see in society today is is a huge element um that&#39;s where some of the worry in AI if you will comes so um the thing about every technological or Finance evolution we&#39;ve seen in our society um at least since I&#39;ve been alive is the pattern of every single one being led uh predominantly by men and each Evolution ending in crises right so bank failures global economic disasters um you know we we just kind of had that experience with the crypto space and you know it was a new space but at the same time while its goal was to and is still is to be able to expand Financial Services to more people um and it still has that capability along the way in the last few years the the listening the voice of who is leading the conversation around cryptocurrency fell on the same people on the same type of people right I.E basically like super rich white men right uh who didn&#39;t really care about crypto and blockchain Technologies original goal which is to serve the underserved so because those voices largely took over that space I mean look what happened we saw a a the same pattern in that um that bro culture if you will really kind of lost the wind and lost the real um the like wholesomeness and what is capable of this technology I don&#39;t want to see the same thing happen in Ai and what&#39;s scary is that especially in the media landscape we you&#39;re kind of already seeing it um I think we&#39;re being a little more cautious this time around um because AI I think is almost is just easier for people to wrap their heads around than blockchain technology which yeah and um and we&#39;re just seeing it&#39;s been around longer literally it&#39;s just been around longer so we&#39;re seeing an advancements that make more sense to people so I think a big piece of that is leaders in the space to wrap this up with a bat need to um be very cautious of the type of researchers and the type of people leading the AI discussion that they&#39;re listening to so let&#39;s make sure that we&#39;re not just listening to you know the New York times&#39;s list of who&#39;s who&#39;s in AI which is all 12 which is a list of a dozen men I rewrote that list for them with a dozen women in AI that they could be paying attention to instead right um so that&#39;s something I want us to be really cautious of right like let&#39;s listen to you know Dr Fifi Lee Dr latata Sweeney Sweeney Dr uh uh Daphne kler just Google incredible women in AI they are out there and Women&#39;s World banking Google Women&#39;s World banking too because we have some great resources on AI machine learning that you can you can check out on our website and I&#39;ll link to them below as well yeah exactly so listen to them and let&#39;s for once let a different group of people lead the technology Revolution and lead the lead the narrative and let&#39;s see how things are come out differently for us yeah so let&#39;s talk about consumer protection then as like a natural follow on um women are more likely than men to say that they value privacy that&#39;s a big concern of of women&#39;s and then they&#39;re also more likely to say they want to talk to a human when something goes wrong um and have a really effective efficient redress process so when we&#39;re thinking about the world that you&#39;ve just painted a picture of where um everybody&#39;s data is clean and it&#39;s easy to make decisions about them and we can build lots of um lowcost highly scalable financial services using AI machine learning where does Consumer Protection fit into that picture and how can women be part of that that conversation yeah I think I think um that&#39;s a that&#39;s an important part of literally everything because for I know for me as a reporter over the years I&#39;ve been pretty bored with the narrative that consumer protection and regulation stifles Innovation I actually think that they are not mutually exclusive I mean luckily we you know have some folks in our Congressional you know Offices here in the states that recognize that um but to to your point I mean there is no there really is no advancing these Innovative Technologies unless we are protecting the people that it&#39;s meant to serve and if as long and we have to follow leaders and and policy leaders in the space who care more about protecting the consumer than and and less about protecting the status quo really um exactly so like maybe let&#39;s not dismantle the cfpb I use an acronym maybe let&#39;s not dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which is a government institution in the US um for those Ling internationally yeah yes and and and you know speaking to America specifically which is what I know um in terms of Regulation but I think there&#39;s a lot of ways we can do this I think we could be a lot more collaborative in terms of uh how all of the stakeholders actually work together um and then there is a level of frankly patience that I think we could do a bit better at uh people get really really excited to move fast on these technological uh advancements and I get it we have to we do there is like a level of urgency because the wealth gaps and the inadequacies of the financial services space are so huge but maybe instead of moving fast and breaking things we moved at a decent pace and protected our our end consumer which is the whole point of why we&#39;re all here right um so that for me comes with mostly a lot of like narrative shifts a lot of mindset shifts in terms of seeing regulation as a true partner in this as opposed to H this thing I have to deal with because laws you know it&#39;s maybe I can maybe I can actually fully follow what you know the house Financial Services committee is working on what is Maxine Waters up to right uh what are these Congressional humans at least here in the states working on and I know that happens I learned at Women&#39;s World banking just how advanced other countries are compared to the US when it comes to this um so Kudos um but that&#39;s that&#39;s for me what I would love to see more of is just uh the leaders in the business business sector especially in Venture Capital especially in um in these prominent CEOs and and Leadership roles that get so much press imagine how powerful it would be if leading figures like that just went out there and said you know what I&#39;m so excited to work with Regulators to protect the consumer period instead of you know what I&#39;m going to support someone who cares less about protecting the consumer and more about prot protecting my business because I need to protect my bottom line it&#39;s like so that&#39;s I think what we should be mindful of as Business Leaders is once again who who are you listening to who are you following and how can we get how can we organize and get more people to be open to speaking up to protect the consumer and not the status quo yeah and I loved your point about it not being a dichotomy between consumer protection and Innovation I think that&#39;s really good for for us to keep in mind um well just those calms alone would be just to add those calms alone think about it like the messaging alone you mentioned like women want that transparency they they want to know they&#39;re being protected seeing Business Leaders seeing Congress seeing these figures in the space straight up saying that that that&#39;s what that communication is what creates trust yeah I mean that&#39;s how Amazon got huge market share or one of the ways was people were like I want to make a return they said okay yeah great you don&#39;t even have to send it back to us we&#39;ll just credit your account and we&#39;ll just trust that you&#39;ll send the thing back to us and they were very consumer Centric beginning they got huge market share um I think it&#39;s a good example what how however you feel about Jeff Bezos and Amazon it&#39;s a really good example example of consumer protection and consumer Centric Services as well um I have two more questions for you the first is we haven&#39;t yet heard about your book and I would love to give you the floor to share a little bit a little bit about it and you peppered some names in throughout the conversation which I&#39;m assuming are chapters in the book but I actually I would I can&#39;t wait to read it and I&#39;d love to hear a little sneak preview of course on so the book fintech feminists is essentially about women&#39;s integral role in shaping the future of our economy to be more sustainable and to be more Equitable so think about every major Financial challenge that is out there I wish I tackled every single one of them but I did my best to tackle as many as possible from the student loan crisis to the retirement crisis to climate change to health care to um the just sheer lack of financial services catered to women let&#39;s just start there that&#39;s a that&#39;s a huge portion of the book um but what really excited me the most about the book is really being able to leverage the hundreds of interviews that I&#39;ve had over my years as a reporter and finally put into the you know history right like a recorded version of History which is what a book is and show that women aren&#39;t only here right now building some of the most incredible um and Innovative companies in the fintech space that are serving the underserved the the historically ignored they&#39;re creating those opportunities for them building successful and profitable companies that are also sustainable and doing good they&#39;re able to do all of that and they do all that in spite of a system that provides them only 1% of enter Capital funding that provides them the the least amount of resources so they&#39;re they&#39;re scrappier than their male counterparts they&#39;re and they&#39;re more they&#39;re able to lean into their vulnerability more they showcase characteristics of great leaders in ways that you don&#39;t typically see in the news media right um so a lot I have about there&#39;s I need to do a recount because I there&#39;s like about 40 profiles but when I count you know women that are featured in the book or you know have moments or quotes in it it really is probably around closer to 50 um I fit as many as I could uh in in 350 pages but you&#39;ll get to really uh learn the blueprint for How To Succeed as an entrepreneur as a business leader in the fintech space by following these women&#39;s narratives and when you follow their narratives not only do you get to create kind of circling back to the top of this conversation you as an individual you get to start working on your own career and your own startup and the things that you want to work on and using these women&#39;s insights including marielen is karian the president of women&#39;s world banking uh she has such a fabulous chap in the book I I love it so much can&#39;t wait for you to read it and um so you get to learn from their experiences and learn from their inspiring stories and apply it to yourself and then you realize you&#39;re not so alone right then step from an individual level Next Step you get to create a community right these women are have been in your shoes they have felt what you felt but they&#39;ve decided to do something about it and they&#39;re going to inspire you to do something about it too so and then on top of all of that they&#39;re going to show you how to lead didn&#39;t succeed in this digital Finance Revolution so it&#39;s just like you get a little bit of everything you&#39;re getting research you&#39;re getting personal story and narrative you&#39;re getting uh blueprints for Success uh yeah and I actually think um Gabe the ruhan the CEO of pay code one of the one of the few men who has made a cameo in the book but you know also also one of the few men who got a mention in this podcast along all the women that we&#39;ve discussed today right right but you&#39;ll get stories from women you know prolific women like Sally cotek the CEO and founder of elvest kind of the first out the gate to create a a a fintech uh platform for women by women um you just trailblazing figures like Angel Rich who&#39;s the founder and CEO of credit rich and you know one of the and is the first uh woman with a blackowned Neo Bank um which is just huge mileston so not only are women here right now building these incredible things but I also take a moment to make sure that we honor the women of the past so there have been so many women that have really shaped the digital Finance infrastructure that their stories often get buried and we don&#39;t often hear about them in our history books I wanted to make sure that before you meet you know 40 to 50 trailblazing figures you knew who built the rails of our financial services and our technology infrastructure to begin with a lot of them are trailblazing incredible women in our history women like Maggie Walker who was the first woman to own and operate a blackowned bank in America um women like Grace Grace Hopper right who uh literally built the coding infrastructure um that Banks run on today so there&#39;s aah lovely right is like literally our America&#39;s first coder so so the next time women listening to this the next time if you think that this space isn&#39;t for you honey we built it we built this space okay it&#39;s just along the way our voices got buried but we&#39;re taking it back so um and that&#39;s what the book does in many ways so excited for you to to read it and I think you&#39;ll really love it I can&#39;t wait and we&#39;ll put a link um in the uh in the chat Below on the YouTube page for a link to um to pre-order the book for those of you who are listening um and okay so I have one last question which is considering the rapid changes in the fintech landscape I mean it&#39;s moving so quickly what kinds of steps and let&#39;s just stick to like one or two what one or two steps should industry leaders take to ensure that inclusion remains at the Forefront of innovation and growth um I think uh one of my other favorite quotes from my book comes from Sarah Levy and she&#39;s the CEO of betterment one of the largest independent uh investment platforms here in the states and she really always says in the book what gets measured gets done so at the end of the day yes we need the individual yes we need the community we need the policy but as Leaders you have to to intentionally put measurements in place because at the end of the day if you don&#39;t set a there is if you don&#39;t set a Target if you don&#39;t set a goal then how are you supposed to hit something that you don&#39;t even put into place to measure um that I think would be the number one step is to get ridiculously intentional about it uh know that this isn&#39;t like some subsection of your company that is a nice to have and really good for or when women&#39;s history month and all these you know months come up but instead is an integral role of your business Foundation um once you see that at the end of the day if you prioritize inclusion and diverse perspectives in your business particularly from the beginning I&#39;ve spoken to Industry leaders and like startup CEOs who are like I&#39;ll PR prioritize diversity and inclusion after the first three years I&#39;m like oh no no no it&#39;s just get harder from there I&#39;m going need you to to focus on it at the gate who is your co-founder who is your who are the first 10 hires you know if you were to ask someone like Serena Williams who is Serena Williams and the and also an investor through uh Serena Ventures she specifically has said one of her first things she looks at from a Founder is who are your first 10 hires and is it a diverse roster because if it&#39;s not then I don&#39;t think the product you&#39;re creating is going to really resonate with a lot of people because how could it if you if the leaders in the space don&#39;t represent the experiences of the audience that you&#39;re after or the the consumer that you&#39;re after so I would start there what gets measured gets done that&#39;s great that&#39;s a different direction than I thought you were going to go and probably more meaningful because I thought you were going to say like innovate and you know like something those Buzz all the buzzwords but getting back to basics and saying set a Target collect the data and measure your progress against that Target report it to the board report it to your investors creates accountability and also forces inclusivity in a way that&#39;s as you said like just baked into the fabric of the institution it&#39;s great exactly exactly and once when you do that what&#39;s so important too and I talked about a bit in my book is you know we got to get the women leaders these spaces out of these silos um there&#39;s it&#39;s it is not as someone who&#39;s been in that those positions of being the only in the room that is not a fun place to be and so for for women you know wanting to take initiative if you any and another great quote from my book from Asia Bradley an angel super angel investor but she says if anytime she sees herself as the only woman in the room she Mak sure she changes it whatever that takes um who does she got to talk to what boss who does she have to hire because operating in silos is not how we as women grow and expand and get better we have to support each other unequivocally like no questions asked fund each other&#39;s businesses amplify each other&#39;s careers for me it&#39;s writing I use the f is platform to write as many stories as I can every week about women leading in the space um so that&#39;s that&#39;s the other element is um just make sure you&#39;re not operating in a silo and surround yourself with Incredible women in these spaces because there are so many and if you don&#39;t know any come read my book read my newsletter you&#39;ll be introduced to new ones every week thanks Nicole and yeah I would highly recommend the newsletter thank you so much for joining us today I really enjoyed our conversation um I&#39;ve got some great nuggets that are coming out of this um that I I can&#39;t wait to share with people tonight around the dinner table honestly this is like practical advice and um and also like good insights on the industry so thank you ah yes no thank you excit I want to be at your dinner table so it&#39;s a good one next year next year in Mumbai you know that&#39;s right that&#39;s right exactly thank you thanks I&#39;m so grateful to Nicole for joining us like I said I&#39;m coming away with just some some really um practical ways that are not scary or intimidating practical ways that I as an individual can think about um how to advance women in leadership how to consider women customers more more intelligently and um intentionally and so I hope you&#39;re coming away inspired too if you work for a fintech um you can actually take a six minute quiz that we have on online on Women&#39;s World banking&#39;s website it&#39;s called the fintech diversity scorecard you can just search for that you can take a six-minute quiz to find out how you&#39;re doing um and whether you&#39;re doing enough to make a difference um you can also stay on the lookout for Nicole&#39;s book fintech feminists which is coming out in in October you can pre-order it right now on amazon.com we&#39;ll put the link in the in the chat below um if you&#39;re looking on YouTube um and if you found today&#39;s discussion valuable please please please don&#39;t forget to subscribe to rate US to leave a review on your favorite podcast platform we&#39;re kind of new on all the platforms um it&#39;s a risk because we Diversified our platforms and it means we catch fewer people on each one um even though we&#39;re growing quickly and your feedback really matters in this time in the development in our podcast so um please please let us know what you think and help us to bring you more content that resonates with you you can stay engaged stay informed and I look forward to connecting with you in our next episode on September 19th thank you so much [Music]

Transcript for:Empowering Women in Fintech Podcast Insights

Transcript for:
Empowering Women in Fintech Podcast Insights