Women’s World Banking, Findexable and Money20/20 are today launching the first Global Fintech Diversity Scorecard that enables fintech and financial services companies to track themselves for diversity, benchmark against peers and monitor progress over time.
The scorecard, based on Women’s World Banking’s proprietary Gender Assessment Methodology developed with the support of Convergence takes the form of an anonymised six-minute online survey that measures a firm’s current position on internal gender diversity and outreach to women clients. The scorecard culminates in a free, high-level report that includes an overall gender diversity result and initial recommendations for improvement.
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The initiative launches today and our target is to share the first results later in 2023. Each individual company’s results are anonymous but collectively they will give an unrivaled view into how the Fintech and financial services industry is progressing.
It is well known that diverse businesses with diverse management teams perform more strongly than those that are not. The original 2015 McKinsey report on this topic and updated in 2020 outlines that diverse businesses perform more strongly and there is a direct link between diverse management teams and an organization creating products that serve everyone in society.
Mary Ellen Iskenderian, President and CEO of Women’s World Banking, explains: “Investing in women both as customers and talent builds competitive advantage. We developed the Gender Assessment Methodology to help institutions build strong, gender-diverse teams and position themselves to serve and benefit from the multi-trillion dollar women’s economy.”
“Fintech firms are ideally placed to design and offer financial products and services best suited for excluded and underserved customer segments, which is why we are working with Findexable and Money/2020 to share our methodology and experience to accelerate diversity, and ultimately, financial inclusion.”
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Denise Gee, founder and managing director of Findexable, points out that customers and employees expect diversity and that boards are under pressure to deliver.
“Diversity is also good for business,” adds Gee. “To achieve true diversity in financial services and fintech requires collective action. This is why we are building a global consortium to accelerate diversity in fintech and highlight the missed value creating opportunities of building products for women and customers from diverse backgrounds.”
“Measurement of the current position of a company’s diversity position is critical” added Tracey Davies, President of Money20/20. “We all know progress is being made but we need to be clear of where we are now so we can accelerate that progress. If we don’t measure and understand where we are we simply will not move forward fast enough. This data will provide an annual stocktake on progress and we are delighted to be partnering with Women’s World Banking and Findexable to support this initiative.”
