Let’s be honest: fintech loves talking about diversity. Panels, hashtags, initiatives, you name it. But on the ground, things aren’t moving fast enough.
In 2024, women-only founding teams in Europe received just 12% of total VC funding, around €5.76 billion across more than 1,300 rounds, according to the Female Innovation Index. Meanwhile, 82% of capital still flows to all-male teams, per PitchBook. Despite years of awareness campaigns, this distribution has barely shifted, just one percentage point over the last five years, as confirmed by Atomico’s State of European Tech.
The women are present at pitch events, in accelerators, building high-performance startups. The funding? Not so much.
And no amount of well-meaning panels is going to fix that.
Not a pipeline problem, but a pipeline blockage
There’s this tired excuse that women don’t apply, or aren’t interested, or that they “just need more mentoring.” I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard that. In reality, women-led fintech teams often get questioned harder on risk and traction, while their male counterparts are asked about vision and growth potential.
But the data shows something else entirely: women are applying, building, pitching, and still not getting funded.
In fact, research from the Harvard Kennedy School shows that investors tend to ask different types of questions based on gender: women are asked about risk and loss, while men are asked about vision and gain. This difference in framing leads directly to less funding for female-led teams, even when business performance is equal.
It’s subtle, but it happens constantly.
The women are already building — the market just isn’t paying enough attention
In Romania, Ana-Maria Georgescu co-founded Smart Fintech, the first open-banking platform authorized by the National Bank. In France, Céline Lazorthes launched Leetchi, a group payment app used by millions across Europe. Anne Boden, founder of Starling Bank in the UK, built not only a challenger bank but a full-stack banking engine now powering Romania’s Salt Bank. And in Finland, Monica Liikamaa, co-founder and co-CEO of Enfuce, is scaling a card issuer processing business aiming for €10B in ARR by 2035.
These are not feel-good “female founder” stories, token names, they’re serious businesses driving serious innovation. The only reason we’re still talking about them as “exceptions” is because the system keeps underestimating them and fails to normalize their success in the narrative of fintech growth.
The Fix: Capital, culture, or?
If fintech wants to be genuinely innovative, it must rethink how and where it identifies opportunities. This isn’t about creating separate funding tracks, it’s about improving mainstream investment practices. That means doing more than just celebrating women. It means investing in them. Here’s what that looks like:
- Rethink deal sourcing:
- If 90% of your pitch pipeline is male, the problem isn’t merit. It’s access. A Diversity VC study found that only 13% of European VC partners are women. This directly affects who gets seen and backed. Expanding sourcing channels through accelerators, founder communities, and universities creates visibility and improves selection.
- Back female-led funds:
- Data from Kauffman Fellows and All Raise show that female VCs are twice as likely to invest in female founders. If you want different results, you need to support different gatekeepers. Allocators of capital shape the face of the industry. Supporting women in LP and GP positions is one of the fastest ways to break the cycle.
- Prioritize results, not just representation:
- Female-led teams have been shown to deliver better returns per dollar invested and demonstrate higher resilience during downturns. This is supported by research from BCG and MassChallenge. Yet they remain underfunded. It’s time to let metrics, not bias, drive decisions.
- Stop hiding behind “we hire based on merit”:
- “We hire based on merit” only works if everyone starts from the same line. In reality, most founders do not. Structural inequality affects access to capital, networks, and time. Real meritocracy begins with equitable opportunity, not with assumptions of neutrality.
Fintech can lead, if it chooses to
Inclusion isn’t about having a nice gender split on your speaker lineup. It’s about changing who gets the microphone, who gets funded, and who gets the benefit of the doubt.
Fintech moves fast. We pride ourselves on being ahead of the curve. But when it comes to gender equity, we’re still stuck in legacy-mode.
So here’s the challenge:
- VCs: Track the gender balance in your portfolios, then act on the insights.
- Accelerators: Make room for founders outside the usual networks.
- Journalists & ecosystem builders: Feature women founders based on their business traction, not just in March for International Women’s Day.
We have a chance to build a smarter, more inclusive financial system, one that reflects the full breadth of entrepreneurial talent – because everyone has the potential to succeed in fintech. That’s why we shouldn’t reduce this to a diversity game, it’s about sound business sense, better products, stronger teams, broader education, and a more resilient economy.
But we’ll only get there if we move beyond representation and focus on the redistribution of capital, trust, and opportunity.
