Within the financial services sector, much like the technology industry, as career levels rise, female representation declines. But there are women who are challenging the status quo and actively making their mark in this space. Women like Christine Wu, Nollie Maoto, Vanessa Padayachee and Judi Smit.
According to Padayachee, who is Group CIO, Corporate Functions at Standard Bank Group, the world of finance and technology is changing rapidly; women have a key role to play in shapingthe future state of technology in organisations. Having more women in senior roles increases the diversity of teams, which fosters unique thinking, creativity and innovation, she says. Being part of the financial industry for more than 25 years, she believes that massive transformations have been made, but stresses that there is still so much more that can be done.
Judi Smit, Capitec’s product line head for electronic payments, shares this sentiment. “I first joined a bank in 1999. Back then, I was often the only woman in a meeting. There were very few women in banking technology and the ones in leadership positions could be counted on one hand,” she says, noting it is far more representative now. “There are still more men than women, but the ratios are definitely changing.”
We need to get the message to woman that working in banking, and in technology in banking, is immensely rewarding on so many levels.
Judi Smit, Capitec
The discrepancies are evident, continues Christine Wu, managing executive, customer value management at the Absa Group, highlighting that this lack of diversity can cause problems when you look at some of the industry’s biggest trends. So many businesses are looking for ways to make technology more human, but how do we create products and services that cater to everyone if all the key decision-makers are men?
“This is where having more women on the team, and having women fully immersed in every area of the business, is extremely beneficial.”
When Nollie Maoto, FNB’s chief data and analytics officer and the head of pricing for merchant services, joined the tech industry, she used to describe herself as ‘an only’ because she was so often the only woman on the team, the only woman in important meetings and the only woman sitting at the boardroom table. “Being there – in those rooms, sitting at those tables – I found myself asking, ‘what am I doing to actually prevent these experiences from happening to woman coming behind me?’”
Cloud ambitions
Despite being in the minority, when one takes a look at some of the projects these women are working on, the value they bring to the industry is clear.
At Absa, this value was critical to the development of AbsaID, a facial biometrics system that uses facial mapping technology to verify and identify customers, adding an extra layer of security to the bank’s online platforms. “Most of the banks just leverage the face ID that's on your smartphone to authenticate your identity. But we have built additional security features on top of that to provide extra protection.” According to Wu, the ultimate idea is to tokenise AbsaID so that it can be used in other areas where people might want to share personal data in an encrypted format. This could mean that a customer will never have to fill out a form when visiting a doctor because their important medical information will be available via an encrypted token.
Maoto’s expertise is making an impact at FNB by helping the bank improve certain customer interactions. With natural language processing, a branch of artificial intelligence that focuses on helping computers understand how humans write and speak, FNB can use a robot to understand what services a customer actually needs. This same robot can either complete the request automatically or push the request on to a human. Keen to provide customers with a great experience, the bank is also leveraging composable data analytics, which provides them with greater context when making decisions. “We're shifting from big data to small and wide data, or data that's coming from a variety of sources.” This provides more context for analytics and intelligent decision-making and creates a more holistic end-to-end picture. In action, this makes it possible for bankers to view all the interactions a customer has had across the group. So, if you discussed your car or home loan with the bank two weeks ago, a banker can view this timeline in one place and offer a better customer experience.
For Padayachee, the focus is on becoming a platform business, describing this as Standard Bank’s ‘True North’ aspiration. “Standard Bank Group’s platform positioning will increasingly enable us to provide our own products and services, while partnering with other organisations to distribute their offerings through our platform. Thus far, we’ve implemented solutions such as OneHub, developed on the Salesforce platform.” Through OneHub, clients can access solutions from Standard Bank’s technology partners and new capabilities can be co-created with developers to address specific-client needs, she explains. Padayachee adds that cloud is a core part of their strategy, with the bank even labelling 2022 as ‘The year of cloud’. “We’ve partnered with AWS and Microsoft to help us achieve our cloud ambitions.”
Smit is also focussing her efforts around cloud. As the payments space evolves, she’s working to ensure that Capitec keeps up. “The move to cloud is probably the biggest change we’re dealing with. Moving applications into the cloud requires a lot of unlearning and relearning and is a great opportunity for us to make our products more efficient.”
For example, the bank’s rapid payments project, which is a new industry solution that seeks to deliver immediate payments, is the first payments solution that it is building end-to-end in the cloud. “We’re using cloud-specific databases, micro services, message queues and integration services,” she says.
But Smit is quick to admit that this work is not challenge-free. Technology in banking is a tough world, she stresses. “Systems are a lot like babies. They want constant attention, don’t care about what else is happening in your life and will break at the most inconvenient times. Anyone who has worked in the production environment of a bank will know that Friday afternoons are synonymous with production problems. But, like a baby, when it wants attention, there is no getting away from it. The demands on one’s personal life can cause a lot of women (and men) to leave tech.”
Moving the needle
In terms of redressing the gender imbalance, they all agree that change needs to happen early.
“I still remember when I was in high school, I wanted to do computer science. I went to an all-girls school and there was no computer science, so I had to go to the boys’ school next door,” recalls Wu.
A greater focus at school level to encourage young girls to pursue careers in technology is imperative, Padayachee continues. “We need to ensure that the youth is aware of the possibilities available to them. I personally think that most young women don’t know what careers in technology can offer.”
We need more role models. Celebrating female tech leaders will hopefully encourage more girls to pursue their interests and careers in tech, thereby increasing hiring pool diversity.
Nollie Maoto, FNB
It is also important to focus on the appointment of women into digital and tech roles. She says: “We need to encourage women in technology to be the ambassadors and inspire other women accordingly. We also need to create platforms for women to showcase the importance of being part of the rapidly changing tech world.”
Smit says: “We have to sell the ‘why’ and give women a reason to enter technology fields. We need to get the message to woman that working in banking, and in technology in banking, is immensely rewarding on so many levels,” she continues.
“Our work influences the way people transact every day, it contributes to the efficient functioning of the economy and makes people’s lives easier. It is a noble and worthwhile pursuit.”
As much as some strides have been made to advance women in tech, more still needs to be done to change the way talent is developed and deployed in today's world, suggests Maoto. “Unfortunately, whether we like it or not, it requires a lot of undoing and unlearning of age-old processes, literally rethinking how we do things in order for us to create new norms and values. This is especially true when looking at the education system,” she says. “We need more role models. Celebrating female tech leaders will hopefully encourage more girls to pursue their interests and careers in tech, thereby increasing hiring pool diversity.”
For Wu, these conversations need to be had at different levels. For junior people, the focus must be on making sure that they have the right supporting skills and building blocks to help them to develop their own brand so that they can ensure a future for themselves in the industry. “As you become senior, the demands are greater and many women battle with making time for family and work. Here, we need to help them navigate this challenge by coming up with ways to create more flexibility in the workplace so that they can do well at both.”
“The only way things will change is if our efforts are actually measured. If we put these goals on the leadership scorecard, to ensure that we are hiring more diverse teams and that we are creating a pipeline within the team for succession planning,” says Maoto. Failing to meet these targets should be considered when annual salary reviews roll around. “If people don’t feel it in their pockets, then things won't be done, and nothing is going to change.”
* This feature was first published in the August edition of ITWeb's Brainstorm magazine.
Share