Series Nine, Episode Four: Fairness in Fintech – The Fintech for All Charter: Tackling rising aggressive behaviours and encouraging inclusive corporate culture

Julia: Hello, my name is Julia Streets, and welcome to DiverCity Podcast, talking about equality, inclusion, and diversity in financial services. On the podcast we seek to shine a light on positive progress, call out areas requiring further focus and offer lots of ideas to help drive change.

Today I’m delighted to be joined by Rosie Turner and Amy French.

Rosie Turner is the Co-CEO and Co-Founder at InChorus Group, a technology company providing analytics and data-led training to tackle systemic bias and harassment. With InChorus, Rosie has worked extensively across several industries, most notably music and fintech, and most recently Rosie Co-Founded the FinTech For All, an industry-wide campaign focused on using data to create a more inclusive fintech sector backed by leading fintechs themselves.

Rosie, wonderful you could join us today. Thanks so much for being here.

Rosie: Thank you very much for inviting me. It’s wonderful to be here.

Julia: Rosie is joined by Amy French. Now Amy French is the head of Level39. She joined the Level39 team back in 2014 quickly excelling to take leadership of a diverse community of some 200 high-growth tech businesses. At Level39 she’s been instrumental in forging partnerships between both Level39 and global institutions, investors, academia, and government. Under her leadership, she supported some thousand entrepreneurs, which call the place home. I say, “The place,” because actually in her role, not only did she oversee the growth strategy, but she works closely with the parent company, The Canary Wharf Group. Amy, wonderful to see you. Thank you so much for being with us.

Amy: Thanks so much for having me.

Julia: I’ve been really looking forward to this conversation because for me as an entrepreneur in the world of fintech, it feels like it really, really matters. I’ll just introduce you both in terms of your own initiatives and what you’re focused on.

Rosie. Let me come to you first of all, this is recorded in the middle of October. What’s your focus for the rest of the year?

Rosie: It’s definitely been a rather exceptional year and with COVID, significant challenges to I think everyone working in diversity and inclusion and the working world at large. To give a little bit of context, at the beginning of 2020, we launched FinTech For All, the industry initiative you mentioned, and our objective was to create a more inclusive fintech sector. We actually started at the beginning of 2020 with a research piece looking at the culture across all of fintech and last month off the back of this, we launched the FinTech For All Charter.

For us, this final quarter is really, really exciting because it’s where we’re actually building on all of that research and the initiative at large to start to kick off the actions and the tangible next steps we’re looking to take. I think this final quarter is about building on that project’s momentum and really increasing the number of companies that we have involved and working with them to map out their action plans for progress.

Julia: Wonderful. We’re going to get into the charter itself in just a moment. I’m really looking forward to getting into that. Busy end of the quarter for you clearly. Amy, for you and your thousand entrepreneurs of 200+ companies, tell us what you’re focused on.

Amy: I very much echo what Rosie said about this being an interesting year as it has been for us at Level39 and our entrepreneurs. There’s been a lot of unwelcome uncertainty across the board, but I guess the remaining quarter for us is continuing to support entrepreneurs. Connectedness in our community is the most important thing to ensure that our businesses big and small, who are part of our community still have opportunities to connect to industry experts, connect to partners, have opportunities to scale their team, scale their businesses, raise money and also still grow into international markets. For us, it’s still developing that network, ensuring that we provide those opportunities to our members. A lot of that is actually now coming through virtual activities, events, connections, and also through work with the likes of InChorus and yourself.

Julia: Let’s just stay with you because Rosie was saying in her introduction about having the fintech charter being a really key initiative for this year as well. I’m really keen to hear how Level39 became involved and in your view what the charter’s going to set out to achieve.

Amy: Absolutely. Rosie and I met virtually earlier this year and Rosie and Raj, Rosie’s co-founder were sharing about the work that they’d done in the music industry and their interest in doing it in fintech and financial services to make the sector a more inclusive place for everyone. Of course, that rang true with me being at Level39 and being based in Canary Wharf, a big financial services hub. We wanted to make sure that we could also use our own network and platform to encourage as many entrepreneurs and businesses to participate in the research so that we can really gain insight into where we’re at right now as an industry and what can be done to provide actionable change to make a really positive future for the fintech industry. That’s why we got involved. We joined the steering committee alongside Innovate Finance and FinTech Alliance.

It’s been a really interesting few months. We’re looking at how we can educate as well. Share and use this data to educate people in the industry and really provide a resource of support for businesses, no matter the size. That’s why we’re involved. We already have a community of 200 start-ups and we hope as much as possible for those companies to really take this on board and join as signatories to the charter. But also that we can use our network, which is now very much an international network to get that reach even further.

Julia: I was saying in your introduction, Rosie, that this is really all about a more inclusive fintech charter. It’s quite often, it’s understandable to focus, maybe perhaps hone in on gender as being one aspect of a fintech as well. But of course, we on the podcast talk about the entire spectrum that is diversity and inclusion. Really keen to hear to what degree you’re looking at inclusive to right the way across the spectrum. Now, of course, we talk about cognitive disability. We think about LGBT, ethnic minority representation and so, so much more.

Rosie: The FinTech For All Charter, as you say, is very much focused on how do we create a more inclusive sector. There we are really looking at diversity in its entirety. In a way that a lot of the kind of diversity charters that we potentially see in the sector are very much focused on one particular protected characteristic and setting targets around that, we’re focused much more on the culture, the environment, and how can inclusion essentially improve representation, retention. How can we unpick that lived experience? It’s been very, very interesting because as you can imagine, to explore the data there is in some ways a lot more challenging. And so, we began with that research piece, and I think there’s a big shift in our methodology here, which is, as we’re exploring this breadth of lived experience for lots of different aspects of diversity, how can we get data on that in order to use that to guide our actions and our next steps.

We used, as you mentioned, I think InChorus’ technology to collect the lived experience. Data points on the kinds of behaviours that people were experiencing and people can collect that across all protected characteristics. We were really using that to build up a picture and steer our interventions.

Just to give you a tiny snippet of some of those findings that the kind of 500+ incidents logged we saw a particularly high incidence relating to gender. 85% of all our logs did relate to that, but we could also look at it again, ethnicity. Then within that, we were able to build a quite granular picture of the kinds of behaviours that people were experiencing. We saw a lot of behaviours around everyday sexism, sexist jokes, banter, people being spoken over. There was a lot of clearly gender bias and stereotypes that still need to be dismantled there, but we really wanted to create that space to invite all aspects of diversity into the conversation and let that data steer us.

Julia: As you’re looking at that data, were there some areas of diversity inclusion that you think actually does require some further focus?

Rosie: Gender came up very, very high. And so, we’re really, really focused on that. I think one thing there that was particularly troubling was that we saw that a high prevalence where repeat incidents. 84% of these behaviours happened for 78% of them, then weren’t reported. So you’ve got a big issue around that speak-up culture generally. When it comes to other aspects of diversity, definitely there’s not enough conversation there and we want to continue to create that safe space where individuals can raise these kinds of issues. There’s naturally always going to be a bias in our dataset at the moment because of the representation. I think the fact that we have such a high prevalence of gender is not because these issues aren’t affecting other protected characteristics. That’s definitely something that over time, almost by bringing awareness to, we want to be able to impact people to speak up about more issues.

Julia: I think one thing that’s really sticking with me at the moment is we had a fascinating episode with the FCA, the COO of the FCA. I encourage everybody to listen to it because we talk about the culture a lot and we think about therefore, how do you measure culture and how do you assess culture? Crystal clear message from the FCA, which was, if you are an authorised firm this sits under non-financial conduct. This whole point you make about speak-up culture, that absolutely fits with that as well. But I referenced there about the needs to kind of measure progress. I’d love now to turn to Amy. I mean, you signed up with good reason on behalf of all your members as well. I’m really keen to hear what impact you expect this to have on your membership and over what timescale, how do you measure it?

Amy: To answer the first question about timescale, I think this is a big mission to drive positive change, so across an entire industry. I don’t think it will happen overnight, but the really important thing is that the conversation has started and that it started based on data and real-life experiences. I think and I hope for a lot of entrepreneurs and individuals in the fintech and financial services industry that this also provided an opportunity for an outlet, a way to share these experiences where they may not have shared before so that we can actually get a real collective picture of the industry and the ways in which we can make change.

To go to your question around how we’ll measure it, for me, the most important thing is that I would love to see our members join as signatories, and I really encourage them to do so. As I say, we’re doing this as an industry as a whole. We’re wanting to make sure that there are perhaps people that can come to us directly if they need support, if they just want to talk about it. That we can create a group of allies within the industry that people can share best practise and knowledge share in general, and be able to talk to people who are also going through a change within their organisation to ensure that diversity and inclusion are at the centre of what they do.

That is very much part of how the culture within a business needs to develop. We’re keen to make sure that we can support our entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs interested in joining the charter and those already part of it in connecting with people that can help. And so for me, it’s less of a way of measuring in figures, but for me, it’s making sure that we can be as proactive as possible to support every entrepreneur with connecting them in to the best people to support them.

Julia: Rosie, we talked a lot about behaviours in fintech, and obviously, I’ve been around the industry for quite some time. I’d really like to get to the heart of why you started the research.

Rosie: Anecdotally, we hear lots of different stories of non-inclusive behaviours, and I think that’s something that probably resonates with a huge number of us. I think for us, the idea of bringing data into this conversation is absolutely critical because what we typically see is that these kinds of everyday behaviours, the small actions, the small behaviours that are absolutely critical in determining whether somebody feels included or excluded, or typically falling through the net, they’re not picked up necessarily in formal grievance processes or even in engagement surveys. And so, for us to be able to shine a light on that to 1) really hammer home the impact that these are happening, this is happening within this industry. We need to address it. Then 2) to direct our action and lean into the data in order to do that. That was the starting point for us leaning into the data with this project.

Julia: We’ve talked before about hearing stories of harassment and bullying, which are shocking, actually. Maybe not entirely surprising, but they’re shocking. But also, I’m hearing stories of people saying there are implications around the remote working with COVID and that actually bullying and harassment has taken a slightly different turn because people aren’t being held to account because you and I could have a conversation, I can bully you and nobody would ever know unless the line is recorded. I’d love to get some thoughts from you about, what have you found during COVID times around this topic of bullying and harassment?

Rosie: We definitely found when we looked initially at the kind of particularly troubling behaviours, we saw a very high prevalence of unwanted physical contact. About 10% of the incidents we captured in the original research were around those kinds of behaviours, which are obviously very troubling. There is an initial pushback by some who might say, “Well, these kinds of incidents aren’t happening in a work from home context.” So does this mean that bullying and harassment is not as relevant a conversation? I think to your point, that’s absolutely not the case. There was actually some really interesting research that came out a study from Metoo EP that was carried out in summer this year that was essentially looking at the new forms of harassment that were taking place. We definitely know that there are existing instances where people are being able to take very bullying tones over Zoom calls, inappropriate images.

There’s a new term that’s been introduced called the zoombombing, which is this idea of relentlessly harassing somebody over a video platform. I think it’s also really interesting to look at how over new communication platforms, such as something like Slack or Microsoft Teams, how biases, subtle biases are playing out. Whose questions get answered and do certain questions get posted just to an individual, does others go in group chat? I think all of those behaviours, who’s included, who’s excluded, are again, playing out in very different contexts that we really need to draw awareness too. That’s something that we’re very interested in exploring as we’re navigating this new working normal.

I think in terms for companies addressing that, we designed the FinTech For All Charter initially to respond to that data. We were looking a lot at the idea of how do we create a feedback culture. The five points of the charter are actually looking specifically at how do we have a clear and accessible bullying and harassment policy? How are we building awareness through training internally? How are we ensuring accountability when it comes to if a problem emerges is action taken or ensuring that there is a senior executive who’s accountable and that there are fit for purpose kind of reporting mechanisms to do all of this?

I think all of those five points translate perfectly into the situation that we’re in today. Actually, there have been pushes from the likes of ACAS to review some of those policies in light of the new working from home normal because actually, we do need people to understand what these new forms of bullying and harassment might look like. We need to update policies in order to ensure that that’s relevant, and we need to make sure that people still have the channels of communication to voice these complaints if they have concerns.

Julia: Absolutely. It’s incredibly important. It’s good to hear that people are looking and thinking about the policies and the realities. Again, it all flows from having a speak-up culture, which is one way to do it when you’re physically present, but also in this new working structures that will continue for some time to come. No doubt. Just to come back to the Level39 perspective and again, all of these companies you work with who come into your home, as I always like to think, and I’m often in Level39, I’m rather missing it, actually. It’s a great place to go work and think, but also of course, to collaborate and to meet and to innovate, which is fantastic. I know you spent a lot of time thinking about how businesses grow, but I actually am interested to know how you’re helping these businesses to become more diverse. Again, how are you going to measure that change?

Amy: We have always been really focused on ensuring we can provide an inclusive and productive environment for all of our entrepreneurs that base with us, all of the visitors that come in, whether that’s through events, visitors who are members, but we do that in a few ways already and ways I’m sure that we’ll continue to do and do more of. The first couple to share is, we’ve worked with a company or an organisation called Code First Girls for a number of years now, which for anyone that doesn’t know is an organisation that provides free coding to young women, to really get them into a career in tech. We support them as an organisation and have done for now seven years by providing a venue in some senses so they can actually host the courses at Level39, but we want to go a step further than that.

We encourage people within our community already. Not necessarily the founders of our businesses, some are, but people within tech roles within our startup companies to actually participate as the trainers of these courses, but also to share their own stories within tech. The way that that career path has mapped out, especially from inspirational young women within our community already to share that with this younger group of women is a fantastic opportunity to give people coming out of Code First Girls an opportunity to tap into the opportunities that may lay ahead for them, but also for the entrepreneurs here to see this next generation of talent, which is young women doing incredibly well at both the beginner and advanced courses of Code First Girls. We’ve absolutely loved being part of that for these years and we will continue to do so.

Another way is working with programmes and accelerators the likes of Foundervine, who are an accelerator specifically designed to encourage diverse founders to come together and build tech products. We hosted their accelerator last year. Again, it’s that making sure that we have them in our network, that our members are aware of it. That again, you connect people in, so the best practises and the knowledge across different groups and different audiences is shared and combined. So those are two ways.

But something that we’ve been talking about with the steering committee for FinTech For All is education, is webinars, is seminars something, hopefully in person soon, but in the meantime, virtual, sharing content, sharing that best practise. One small startup sharing with another small startup versus a larger business that might already have some of these D&I processes in place. Just being able to have the opportunity to talk about it, have the conversation and look at the actual steps and action points that they may need to go through to really push their diversity and inclusion element within their business.

Julia: Which is great because on one level that’s very strategic about thinking about the entire community, and on the other, it’s about very practical, measurable, almost quantitatively and qualitatively measurements for each firm and also as communities as well. I think that’s amazing. Just this whole point about sort of commercial impact because on the podcast we’re always thinking about what commercial impact does D&I offer. Rosie, just before we go to the break was Cynthia with some research, I would just love to hear your thoughts about what commercial impacts will this have?

Rosie: I think when it comes to commercial impact, we can talk through this a little bit through the carrot and a stick lens, for want of a better word. When companies get inclusion right they enable diverse talent to be attracted and retained, and then they can unlock the benefits that we are probably more familiar associated with diversity. But certainly, there are multiple studies from McKinsey showing that companies in the top quartile for gender and ethnic diversity are significantly more likely to have above-average profitability.

There are multiple studies connecting greater diversity to great innovation and resilience. I think that’s definitely hugely important from a fintech perspective to think about, particularly as we’re navigating such uncertain times at the moment. Yes, inclusion, unlocking and empowering the benefits of diversity is a huge commercial impact, I think. But I think on the flip side of that, there’s definitely a real kind of cost to getting this wrong now, both financially and reputationally. At the most extreme end, we’re definitely seeing the costs associated to non-inclusive behaviours or potentially extreme cases of harassment.

But I think even more subtly, there’s an impact on productivity day in, day out that we know how important that is particularly for potentially a younger company where all of that is so important in order to be growing and sustaining their business. There’s a great piece that’s come out recently from the Harvard Business Review looking at the price of incivility that basically shows some fantastic stats around kind of 48% of employees intentionally decrease their work ethic where they’re experiencing small instabilities that are upsetting them on a daily basis. And so, that kind of lens is also a cost that we absolutely can’t afford right now and would have a real commercial impact if not considered.

Julia: Well, they are wonderful reports, I love the data. As you know, all the listeners who tune into DiverCity Podcast will know that we really love data, which of course is a beautiful moment to bring in Cynthia Akinsanya who has some more data to support today’s discussion.

Cynthia: As more companies shift to remote working, cyberbullying and digital discrimination are on the rise. The 2020 survey by InChorus has highlighted that two-thirds of participants wanted their organisation to introduce training to prevent harassment. Additionally, 51% said a set of employment standards for the industry could help tackle the issue. Here is some ways companies can protect employees from cyberbullying, harassment, and digital discrimination.

Employers can take a proactive approach to prevent harassment, bullying, or repeat incidents by implementing training and policies. They can provide procedures and resources for employees to report incidents, educate employees on how to recognise and respond to, and even prevent bullying in the workplace. Employers should frequently communicate the various ways employees can make anonymous reports explaining why reporting is effective and counter negative talk about reports being a waste of time and take all concerns seriously.

They can make policies accessible, targets of harassment and discrimination often hesitate to report incidents due to fear of retaliation, losing their job, or not being taken seriously. More often than not, companies don’t have their policies accessible, therefore employees believe they are not protected. As a result, incidents go unreported, the bullying continues and the performance and engagement of the employee deteriorate. Finally, follow up to ensure a resolution by demonstrating commitment and compliance. Employees look to their Managers to see what’s tolerated and what’s not. When policies are enforced inconsistently employees second guess the organization’s commitment to integrity, safety, and their employees’ wellbeing.

Julia: Thanks, Cynthia. The links to the research can be found on our website, divercitypodcast.com. That’s where you can find all our episodes and sign up for early notifications of future recordings. Please do follow us on Twitter @divercitypod, and DiverCity Podcast is available on BrightTALK and all good podcast channels. We’d love a rating because it all helps to promote the show.

Before we get into the last section of the show, Rosie, I need to ask you, we’ve talked about the research and we’ve talked about the charter, where do people find the research and where can people sign up?

Rosie: The best place to learn more about the research, learn more about all the partners that are involved, find out about the charter and see whether you might be interested in getting involved is to go to fintech.inchorus.org on our website. There’s lots of information, resources there for anyone who’s interested in finding out more.

Julia: Wonderful. That’s great. Thank you very much, indeed. It’s always important to know where to point people to because it does feel like a very important initiative that particularly matters right now as well.

The other thing that I’m really thinking about the matters right now is I’m deeply concerned actually, that as we go into tough economic times, you could argue that we are either in them or on the cusp of them, that actually the importance of diversity and inclusion will drop down the corporate agenda. I’d love to get your thoughts about why it really matters right now, why diversity inclusion stays high? Rosie, going to come to you first of all.

Rosie: Well, completely echo your concerns, Julia, and thinking we’re definitely seeing some very troubling signs that diversity and inclusion is slipping down the agenda a little bit and the impacts of the pandemic are definitely affecting women, ethnic minorities, in very significant ways that we need to be particularly aware of at this point. I think what’s specifically important to think about here is that it would be awful to sleepwalk into a place where we lose ground on progress that has been made.

I think over the last few years, you can look at things like the Women In Finance Charter and see that we have been making progress. Therefore to now actually hear stats such as one in four women are considering downshifting their careers or leaving the workplace, that’s very concerning. I think the last thing we want to do is emerge out of this time having lost loads of ground, with a fintech sector that is even less representative of society at large.

I think it’s absolutely critical that we don’t fall into that trap. I also think that for lots of the reasons I mentioned before, there are huge benefits to diversity and to continuing to prioritise this that will enable us to better navigate and steer the challenges that we’re going to be facing as an economy moving forward.

Julia: I think your point earlier about the importance of resilience, particularly as we go through this, high-performing teams are made up of diverse people at the table, which shores up resilience for sure.

Amy, let me ask you the same question. As you look at your group of entrepreneurs and their amazing businesses, why should diversity inclusion remain high on their agendas?

Amy: I very much echo what both you and Rosie said as well, that we are in a time where businesses big and small need to pivot at rapid speeds in the face of uncertainty and change. To do that, we need creativity and innovation and that really comes from a pool of contributions, ideas, and that is generated from a completely diverse mix of people within your organisation. I think touching on what you said about resilience, it’s so important right now for businesses big and small to maintain the D&I agenda to ensure that they are resilient moving forward in this continued uncertain time.

Julia: Wonderful comments. Absolutely, I think that a lot of people, listeners and also people who have come to the podcast for the first time, would take great heed in the commercial reasons why all of this matters right now. But personally, on a much more personal level, just to finish off the show, I’m really keen to hear what you’re individually optimistic about. Amy, let’s come to you first of all.

Amy: Thank you, Julia. Firstly, I would say the last six months have been quite a learning for all businesses and especially in terms of how they hire. A lot of people have now done their hiring remotely, they’ve onboarded teams remotely. I think that’s really brought down barriers. It means people are now hiring internationally and I hope that will actually encourage that diversity and inclusion piece as well.

The second part is focused on collaboration. We’ve needed to be very collaborative over the last six months in order to really get through this uncertain time. I think that will continue even more so now, but something that I wanted to mention, as we touched upon earlier about education and bringing our communities together, both Level39 have said this, as have Innovate Finance, we’d like to be able to create a platform for our entrepreneurs to learn about the charter, ask questions, also knowledge share with others. We’d also like to open it up to other entrepreneurs. When that is available, we’ll also share that.

Julia: Thank you very much indeed for that. Rosie, see us out with reasons to be optimistic.

Rosie: I think there are a huge number of reasons to be optimistic. I’m personally delighted with the response that we’ve had for the FinTech For All Charter. We’ve had over 30 signatories in quite short windows since we launched and that’s growing rapidly, which is fantastic. I think testimony to the fact that companies are very willing and keen to look to improve on these challenges.

I think for me as well, although there have been devastating consequences of George Floyd’s death and Black Lives Matters, having worked in the diversity inclusion space for a long time, there has been this disconnect between what companies say and what they’re prepared to do. I think in the last few months we’ve seen a little bit of a closing of that gap where actually a cookie-cutter statement of intent isn’t enough and that actually we’re pushing people and we’re seeing people really, really lean into the action that they can take, the data that can back that up. That’s something that I’m hugely optimistic about and think can really fuel and accelerate change over the coming months.

I guess connected to that for us and FinTech For All, there is this real point of collaboration across the industry coming together there as well. We’re thrilled to have the likes of the FCA and many of the kind of associations and membership bodies involved, and also many leading fintechs. For me, there’s that energy for action and a fantastic group of organisations coming together to galvanise that.

Julia: That was a great way to end the show. I think this whole clarion call for those who are not signed up to absolutely get involved and to think about that.

Thank you both so much for joining us. Amy, it’s wonderful too. Thanks for being on the show.

Amy: Thank you so much for having me.

Julia: Rosie, thank you very much. I wish you every success with the charter.

Rosie: Thank you very much, Julia. It’s been great.

Julia: As always to all our listeners on DiverCity Podcast, thank you for listening. I’ve been Julia Streets. See you next time.

Kieron: This episode of the DiverCity Podcast was produced by me, Kieron Yates, on behalf of Julia Streets Productions. Thanks to Cynthia Akinsanya for her insights. You can find out more about the guests on this week’s show on our website, divercitypodcast.com. Whilst you are there, you can also sign up to our newsletter for all our latest updates.

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