Bloomberg celebrates one year of Women in Fintech series

Bloomberg’s ‘Women in Fintech’ series brought together women from across the fintech industry to discuss career stories and challenges, develop professionally and to grow their networks while getting to know their peers.

“I’m proud that Bloomberg is providing a venue for women to share ideas and network within the industry.” — Heidi Johnson, Bloomberg’s Global Head of Community, Collaboration and Compliance Products

Bloomberg – Time and time again, it has been shown that a diverse workforce is the greatest asset to innovation. This was clear at the Women in Fintech one year anniversary event at Bloomberg’s New York headquarters.

The breakfast series began in December 2017 and continued quarterly throughout 2018 with events in both New York and London. The events brought together women from across the fintech industry to discuss career stories and challenges, develop professionally and to grow their networks while getting to know their peers.

Gerard Francis, Bloomberg’s Global Head of Enterprise Data opened the discussion at the one year anniversary and described its objective as creating a community for women in the financial technology world, so they can share ideas and learn along the way. He said, “When we look at the rapid changes that are coming towards us in AI and Machine Learning, there is no time more important than now to expand the talent pool, especially with women.”

A Look Back at a Year of Women in Fintech

Conversation at the inaugural Women in Fintech event focused on representation of women in the technology space. Panelists, all high-ranking women in financial technology, offered some thoughts and advice on the future the industry, as well as how they got to their roles today.

Heidi Johnson, Bloomberg’s Global Head of Community, Collaboration and Compliance Products participated in the December panel and said, “Our panel was filled with lively conversation and fresh perspectives from startups and incumbents on the importance of collaboration and how to succeed in fintech. I’m proud that Bloomberg is providing a venue for women to share ideas and network within the industry.”

Helen Altshuler, Senior Engineering Leader at Google, who grew up in Ukraine, said she did not experience the concept of “male versus female dominated fields” until arriving in the U.S.

“Women were construction workers, factory directors, astronauts and scientists and anything else you can imagine [in Ukraine]. There are also a lot of women leaders around the world,” she said. “As women take on a wider variety of roles in different arenas and with the rise of globalization, the concept of women and their capabilities may change.”

In April 2018, the next Women in Fintech breakfast tackled the topic of financial data security, and featured a panel of four. In his introduction, Brad Foster, Bloomberg’s Global Head of Content, gave a brief context for the emergence of fintech as a sector, then turned the floor over to the panel who discussed its potential and challenges.

Fintech services emerged along with mobile technology to make banking and finance more accessible to consumers, a democratization that also brought about new challenges. Ingrid Busson-Hall, Head of Financial Regulation at PayPal, said one of the reasons they exist is to make sure that people who don’t currently have access to financial services do. “There are a lot of ways we can and should be leveraging the tech that has been created and it is at our fingertips to be able to do that,” she said.

A later event in June built on the previous event, addressing how to overcome hurdles alongside changing consumer behavior. One of those challenges specific to marketing financial services products is the inability to utilize demographic data because of Fair Lending Laws.

Julie Shin, Head of Strategic Operations and Innovation at Citi, agreed. “Where it gets a little bit fun, and maybe challenging, is picking that right innovation,” she said. “When you’re working in a financial services industry there is a higher bar for compliance, risk and regulatory requirements.”

Elena Takacs, team lead for KYC Sales Americas with Bloomberg, pointed out that targeting new customers by leaning on relationships instead of demographics can be fruitful. “Changing behavior is a huge challenge and takes a lot of persistence,” Elena said. “So we are in front of our clients all the time.” She went on to say that leveraging that face time and those relationships can be the springboards off which new products can be launched.

The September breakfast focused on rethinking the path to STEM jobs for young women and the challenges filling the talent pipeline. Participants gave different perspectives from corporate, academic and public policy backgrounds and agreed that a variety of approaches are necessary to attract a more diverse STEM workforce.

One element the panel discussed is the power of female students seeing women in leadership positions and pursuing innovation in STEM. “When it comes to representation, you can’t be it if you can’t see it,” said Grace Suh, VP of Education at IBM and a panelist and.  “That’s an ongoing problem with women and minorities in STEM.”

At the final breakfast of 2018, celebrating the one year anniversary of Women in Fintech, panelists discussed the evolution of the relationships between financial startups and established financial institutions, or “incumbents,” while also sharing suggestions for fintech entrepreneurs.

The panel, moderated by Rachana Bhide, head of global talent for Bloomberg Engineering and presenter with Bloomberg Radio also included Cynthia Figge, co-founder CSRHub, who talked about having successfully partnered with a financial industry incumbent. “One of the things that drove our strategy was that we decided early on, instead of reinventing the wheel, we would take a different approach,” she said. Her Fintech startup recognized the benefit of tapping into an incumbent’s resources, easing their growing pains when scaling.

The group holds quarterly events throughout the year and the first of 2019 will be on March 12th in New York.

Diversity & Inclusion at Bloomberg

Bloomberg drives disruptive innovation and breakthrough performance by embracing and leveraging diversity in all its forms. We strive to create a culture that values difference, fosters inclusion and promotes collaboration to drive business results. Learn more about Bloomberg’s Global Diversity & Inclusion efforts.