Hi, fintech fam 🤑! I went to a Renaissance dance party over the weekend to celebrate because there’s so much to be grateful for!

Last week I flew to Orlando for my first keynote and went to Nasdaq the following day to see the opening bell and Fintech Is Femme logo flashed in Times Square. Then the Fintech Is Femme event on April 24 sold out (interested in sponsoring? HMU), and we launched our virtual community, Real Talk.

And this week, we celebrate International Women’s Day Wednesday, and I’m spending my day at the Women Working in Wealth Summit. But, of course, I’m also bouncing around to other events all week in NYC - so maybe I’ll see you at one!

Before we jump in, I want to shout out my life partner, Anton, who has been the anchor to keep me grounded. All this takes a village – day in and out, he is right there with me, making it happen.

Now, onto fintech.

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EMBEDDED FINANCE

Embedded Finance Can Bring Women Into Fintech

Embedded finance allows female entrepreneurs without backgrounds in Wall Street or Silicon Valley to break into fintech, creating a new wave of founders who may have previously felt excluded from finance and technology.

Fintech has the potential to provide access to financial services to a broader range of people than ever before, yet sadly, the industry still needs to improve in diverse perspectives.

Women represent 30% of the workforce and 12% of founders, according to research by FT Partners. Additionally, all-female founding teams garnered 1.9% of venture capital funding in 2022, a decrease from 2.4% in 2021, according to PitchBook data.

To improve these figures, venture capitalists need to diversify the industries where they look for startup founders, and entrepreneurs need to explore opportunities to innovate outdated industries and break into the male-dominated world of finance technology.

Fintech investor Katie Palencsar was 29 years old when she met a tech company's female founder for the first time. It was also the first time in her life she realized she, too, could be a female founder.

"I was like, 'oh, wow, I can do something like this,'" she said. "That introduced me to the whole world of raising money. I quickly realized what a journey it was and how difficult it was."

After starting a company, selling it, and working for the acquiring company, she found herself at Anthemis Group, a female-founded and led venture capital firm focused on investing in fintech solutions.

In 2021, Anthemis Group raised over $700 million to invest in pre-seed through Series B embedded finance startups and early-stage fintechs. Palencsar said the firm had seen more than 2,000 female fintech founders that come from all types of different backgrounds.

Beyond Traditional

Venture capitalists have long overlooked women and diverse founders due to the social and racial homogeneity of the industry, perpetuating a cycle of male founders receiving the most funding.

Palencsar, managing director at Anthemis Group, said embedded finance unlocked a cohort of founders whose backgrounds are wildly different, creating a new cycle of female leaders who bring more women into the fintech workforce.

The investment firm has seen thousands of pitches from female founders from backgrounds including sustainability, law, beauty, and mobility, according to Palencsar.

"We can get more women involved in fintech," Palencsar said. "But not everyone is going to look the same on paper."

Take Ami Kumordzie, founder of Sika Health, for example. In January, she raised $6.2 million in a round led by Forerunner Ventures as a Black female-founder physician with no technical experience. Kumordzie has developed a fintech platform to connect consumers with IRS-compliant merchants.

Unlike financial services, healthcare is a largely female-dominated industry, with women holding 76% of all healthcare jobs, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. When women use fintech to innovate in healthcare, they show other women the potential to create more financial services solutions in their industry.

Network Effect

By opening up fintech to entrepreneurs outside of finance and technology, investors widen their pool of potential startup founders and increase the likelihood of more capital being raised by women.

"Founders with less traditional finance or tech backgrounds were also hiring more women who didn't necessarily think they would be in fintech," Palencsar said. "It creates this network effect."

When women lead startups, there's a better chance of attracting female talent. Businesses with female founders build teams with 2.5 times more women, and companies with a female founder and executive hire six times more women than those led by men.

Plus, women founders with diverse experiences and backgrounds are well-suited to build outside fintech's oversaturated marketplace. This is critical to embedded finance as more business sectors look to expand their presence.

Greater Market Share

Embedded finance allows businesses to differentiate their offerings and tap into a broader customer base. In 2021, embedded finance already reached $20 billion in revenues in the United States alone, according to McKinsey.

This figure is expected to grow significantly in the coming years as more companies realize the potential of this form of finance and consumers' expectations for digital financial tools increase.

By leveraging embedded finance, companies can create innovative products and services that provide customers with greater convenience and value. It also enables them to maintain a competitive advantage over other fintechs in the market.

However, capitalizing on the growth of embedded finance will require companies to diversify their workforces. That requires women leadership as researchers found that male-founded startups have less diverse teams compared to women-founders.

In that light, investors and businesses have a significant incentive to ensure embedded finance unlocks funding for female founders.

Ultimately, misconceptions around fintech and biases within venture capital perpetuate cycles of exclusion for investors and female founders.

To evolve, venture capitalists must look beyond traditional finance and technology and focus on investing in more women and diverse founders in adjacent industries.

By exploring solutions to the financial services pitfalls in different industries, female business leaders can have a hand in pushing the fintech industry forward. With the proper support, more female entrepreneurs will become a formidable force in the fintech space.

You can hear Katie Palencsar’s full interview on Humans of Fintech where you’ll learn more about:

Media’s impact on the future of female-led fintech
How Katie is thinking about investing in the future
Ways to debunk the “pipeline” problem myth and other silly questions

LISTEN TO HUMANS OF FINTECH

This story is adapted from it’s original form, first published in Forbes as part of my fintech contributor page.

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JOBS

Here are some jobs that I’m curating for the fintech industry. Use this link to submit your role to be featured if you’re looking to hire.

Enterprise Account Manager, Spreedly:

Spreedly’s vision is that the world is better with a diversified, inclusive payment ecosystem. The company is looking for an Enterprise Account Manager responsible for servicing Enterprise-level contract customers - understanding their business objectives and formulating plans to meet those objectives in a way that increases retention and growth.

Senior Product Manager, Lead Bank:

Lover of embedded finance? This job might be the one. Lead Bank is looking for a Senior Product Manager to support the development of its Banking as a Service platform. The API’s and services that you build will create the pathway for our clients to deliver innovative financial products related to deposits, credit and lending, issuing and accepting credit card and/or debit card transactions, as well as many more future possibilities.

I WANT IT, I GOT IT

Today’s Read: So long mean girls, 2023 is the year of the hype woman and we love to see and be it!
Today’s Watch: Why is Jonathan Majors always carrying a little cup? Because you’re a vessel. Nobody can fill you up; nobody can pour you out.
Today’s Buy: I did it. I copped the Royal Purple 3-piece suit from Saint Art New York for Fintech Is Femme in April! To keep things on brand, I’m thinking lilac colored nails. Truly, there is something about taking ownership of the classic suit and styling it to fit my authenticity that makes me feel like I’m owning my power. What fit are you thinking for the big event?