The Flywheel: Women Voices in Finance

Promoting Gender Diversity in the Financial Industry Pipeline

Although women now comprise more than 50 percent of the financial services industry, an imbalance in diversity among leadership at financial institutions persists. Our panelists discuss the obstacles to leadership roles that remain for women in the sector, with Hingorani focusing largely on a perceived lack of diverse candidates in the professional pipeline.

After countless encounters with organizational charts with little to no women on investment teams, Hingorani says she started to ask herself and her peers—where are the women?

“I told them, look, I knew there were few women, particularly those that look like me, in my part of the investment landscape—public equities and hedge funds—but everywhere? Private equity, real estate, infrastructure, fixed income,” she said. “Every single one of them said, ‘Seema, the reason why is because we don’t get résumés from women.’”

To address the gender-diversity pipeline issue directly, Hingorani founded Girls Who Invest, an organization that works to cultivate the financial sector knowledge and talents of young women still in college. Starting as early as their sophomore year of college, participants receive mentoring, education and guidance focused on helping them enter the financial sector post-college. While many pipeline programs focus on incoming senior students, Hingorani prioritized the inclusion of younger students.

“There are so many women out there who have psychology degrees, philosophy degrees, English degrees, chemistry degrees … I was a psychology/philosophy major and never took a finance or accounting class until business school,” she said. “We want to reach those women, but if we don’t go younger … [we’ll hear] ‘Seema, I would have hired her full time, but I wish she just had a little more financial accounting,’ or ‘I just wish she had a little more economics exposure or financial modeling.’ So I basically tried to design a program where the firms couldn’t say no to our young women ”

Girls Who Invest participants are trained on finance and investment concepts taught by some of the best business professors in the world, Hingorani says, in addition to presentation strategies, interview preparation, business etiquette and other “soft skills.” The organization also has an alumni council that works to continue supporting members after they complete the program.

 “To me, it was never enough to say, ‘Okay, we’ll educate you up and give you all this support and then goodbye and good luck,” she said. “This is very much about the long game—that’s the only way we change anything, right?”

Fintech Emerges as a Tool for More Inclusion, Access

Despite growth in access to financial services and an increasing number of “banked” households in recent years, more than 7 million Americans continue to face accessibility challenges, with women and people of color historically encountering the most barriers. The Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated many of those barriers, as physical banks closed and many businesses chose to go cash-less in conducting transactions, leaving those dependent on cash in their day-to-day lives at an impasse. This disparity resulted in a massive opportunity for fintechs, Garza-Hagan tells Park.

“Fintechs stepped in and have provided more wallets and similar mobile products that have allowed women and other unbanked people to operate in a non-cash environment,” she said. “I think these fintechs entities will continue to fill that gap where these banks are still trying to catch up.”

Garza-Hagan says there are other ways fintechs can continue to reaching underserved populations, including by creating products with women in mind, which will naturally increase inclusion in the financial industry.

“Women make a major part of the decisions in a household, so this market is an opportunity for fintechs,” she said.

Breaking Down Barriers to Leadership

To remove the complex barriers to leadership that women face in the financial industry and cultivate more opportunities, Garza-Hagan says, organizations must continue prioritizing equity, accessibility and flexibility.

“I think we need to ensure that women are ready to take the leadership roles and continue to advance. Many times, women take these positions but don’t stay in them long because they don’t have the work-life balance that they need,” she said. “To keep these women in leadership positions, there needs to continue to be a shift in work-life balance and flexibility. I think the financial industry is moving in the right direction and has made a lot of progress; however, there is still a lot of work to be done.”