4 Female Leaders Pioneering Fintech And Crypto

Anne Boden, founder and CEO at British mobile banking app Starling.PHOTO COURTESY OF STARLING.

Women have secured some of the top European posts in traditional banking: Christine Lagarde heads the International monetary fund, Ana Botin is Executive Chair of Santander Group. Now Europe’s leading women in tech are pioneering startups focused on the future of finance too.

In London, the financial capital of Europe, Anne Boden left a string of top finance positions including Head of EMEA at RBS and Chief Operating Officer at Allied Irish Bank to become the first woman to found a UK bank. Boden has a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Chemistry and an MBA. She has raised more than $190 million at the helm of Starling, an app-based bank used by 100,000 British customers. “I understand how to build technology, how to deliver technology and how to manage technologists. That gives you an awful lot of credibility, whether that's with the industry as a whole or with investors,” she tells Forbes.

Despite her background, convincing the industry she knows best hasn’t always been easy. Boden spent much of 2015 explaining to non-believers that, yes, in just a few years we would all want to bank on our phones not just our laptops. If the environments she worked in weren’t 80% male they’d be “far more cooperative” in general, the founder adds. “Women have had to work twice as hard for twice as long,” she says.

Celine Lazorthes, founder of Leetchi and MangoPay.PHOTO COURTESY OF LEETCHI GROU

Women are making headway in this so-called world of “fintech” across the continent too. French founder Céline Lazorthes started her first money-pooling business Leetchi in 2009 after struggling to source funds for a student event. The founder went on the develop the technology underpinning Leetchi into a separate SAAS business called Mangopay (this supports marketplaces, crowdfunding and sharing economy platforms). She exited both to French national bank Credit Mutuel Arkea for $58 million in 2015.

Today Lazorthes remains CEO of Leetchi Group. This has 10 million users and is set to process more than $2.2 billion transactions this year. The founder recalls that even with her computer engineering degree, being a 26-year-old woman and starting out in finance was tough. “People expected a 40+ male, not a young woman with no banking industry experience,” she explains. Running against expectations wasn’t always bad though, and Lazorthes believes it allowed her to excel under the radar because she wasn't feared. “Most of the time people were thinking ‘Oh yes, it's Céline, she’s cute with her little money pot’—they didn’t see that we were building a high-growth innovative company that would change the banking industry,” she says.

Lazorthes’ experience as “a woman in tech” has not only shaped her hiring decision as a boss (Leetchi employs 45% women, across 20 nationalities), it has also shaped her decisions outside of banking. A founding member of France Digitale, Lazorthes supports Girls In Tech and is an active angel investor with a 30% female-led portfolio. “We need women, but more than that we need diversity: if you have only one type of people building one type of company, you will always have the same type of product or service and there will be needs that won't be met,” she says.

Galia Benartzi, cofounder at Bancor.PHOTO COURTESY OF BANCOR.

Perhaps the most exciting area in digital finance today is the world of cryptocurrencies, and female founders are charging into this untrodden sector in Europe too. Galia Benartzi grew up in Palo Alto, where her father was an engineer and coding classes at school and dot.com internships were the norm. After founding and exiting two tech business (the first, Mytopia, sold to online gaming goliath 888 for $48 million dollars and the second, Particle Code, sold to Appcelerator under NDA) Benartzi couldn’t ignore the buzz around blockchain technology.

In 2015 the Israeli-based entrepreneur began to experiment with local currency pilots in Tel Aviv, as well as on both coasts of America, and in the Middle East. One of the most successful was a Tel Aviv cryptocurrency market for mothers which ran a token called “Hearts” and allowed users to trade toys and clothes, handmade goods, and services like babysitting. In its year-long trial Hearts were used by 40,000 mothers who traded 24 million dollar worth of commerce. Through pilots like this, Benartzi realized how vital it was cryptocurrencies could be converted and so cofounded a platform to do this: Bancor. Last June Bancor raised over $150 million through a digital auction known as an ICO and has processed a billion and a half of conversions across 120 currencies to date.

Today, however, Benartzi stands as proof of the hardships tech pioneers must endure: this summer Bancor was rocked by hackers who stole over $13.5 million worth of tokens. “Leadership often involves adversity,” she tells Forbes. The founder is now focused on forging the Crypto Defenders Alliance, a body to help the whole industry better prevent abuse and theft. Bancor has earmarked an initial $100k towards the alliance and has used its first-hand experience to develop an open source blacklist to disincentivize would-be thieves. Benartzi says the CDA must be collaborative to work—it must “belong to everyone”—an sentiment which links to Benartzi’s advocacy for female leaders in finance. “In systems that are meant to be collaborative and serve all people, like finance, it behooves us to have the perspective of all the affected people,” she says.

Francesca Bria, BarcelonaPHOTO CREDIT: ANDRIA COSTA

If the world of cryptocurrencies feels a little intimidating, don’t worry. There are also pioneers working to bring the benefits of this often underground world out into the open. One is Spain’s Francesca Bria who in 2014 led D-CENT, the pan-European project which saw cryptocurrencies piloted in Iceland, Spain and Helsinki. In 2016 Bria was appointed as CIO of Barcelona and today she leads a project called DECODE which focuses on using “crypto” platforms to give citizens better control of their data.

One way DECODE is empowering local people is a pilot which allows citizens to share data they collect on noise quality and air pollution through smart devices. DECODE is also trialing a democratic hub where citizens can sign petitions, vote online, and take granular control of what data they disclose. At the same time Barcelona has launched its own social cryptocurrency to stimulate local businesses as part of the pan-European project called B-MINCOME, Bria says. “Crypto is more transparent, it has integrity and transparency and it creates more trust towards institutions,” she explains.

Bria, who is currently expanding STEAM Barcelona public fab labs to girls in schools, says she feels fortunate to serve under mayor Ada Colau who has openly called for a more “feminized democracy”. As the founder says: when it comes to government, finance or tech “50% of the world population cannot be left outside”.