This month LendIt Fintech conducted our first ever Women in Fintech survey. The goals of the survey were to get a baseline for the state of women in fintech today, to open a dialogue about the participation of women and to ultimately help shape the industry going forward.
A total of 80 prominent fintech companies in the USA were chosen by the LendIt team to participate in the survey. We received 47 anonymous responses back providing us with a decent sample size for the industry. I should note that there may have been a positive selection bias in the results given that those people who took the time to respond, by this very fact, are more interested in the role of women in fintech.
Key Findings of the Survey
- Average percentage of women employed at fintech companies is 37%.
- Average percentage of women in the C-Suite at fintech companies is 19%.
- Percentage of companies with a female founder or co-founder is 16%.
- Department with the most female talent is marketing.
- Department with the least female talent is engineering/product.
- 83% of companies have company policies that encourage women.
- Kabbage and American Express are two companies respondents believe have the best policies supporting women.
Some of these results are not surprising. Although the percentage of companies with a female founder or co-founder seems high to me. I would have guessed the number to be about half that based on my knowledge of the leading fintech companies. But as I said earlier, this is probably part of the selection bias of the survey.
Here at LendIt Fintech we are committed to supporting diversity in fintech. We held a meetup in New York last week where we presented these findings to the community. We also called on people to get involved and a number of people stepped forward at the event to volunteer. If you want to help in this regard please reach out to LendIt Fintech president Joy Schwartz who is leading this effort. We are hoping to build a community of leaders interested in helping build out initiatives that will promote more diversity in fintech.
You can download the survey results here.
Peter Renton is the chairman and co-founder of LendIt Fintech, the world’s first and largest digital media and events company focused on fintech. Peter has been writing about fintech since 2010 and he is the author and creator of the Fintech One-on-One Podcast, the first and longest-running fintech interview series. Peter has been interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, The New York Times, CNBC, CNN, Fortune, NPR, Fox Business News, the Financial Times, and dozens of other publications.