The financial services industry should “make the most of role models” to encourage diversity and inclusion, according to CapitalRise CEO and co-founder, Uma Rajah.
Rajah explained that, when dealing with matters of D&I, trying to “highlight examples of groups of people that are typically underrepresented in a particular industry” is something that can be helpful.
She also said that the presence of role models can help younger people imagine themselves doing a job in financial services by seeing someone of a similar background reflected in a senior position.
“People talk about not having females at a board level in senior management positions, that’s not going to change quickly. That will only change if you fix things right from the start.”
She explained that, with Stem subjects, there is not an equal balance between boys and girls choosing to study those subjects.
“You might get a 50/50 balance at GCSE level but, by the time you get to A-Level, that starts to get a bit polarizing, you then lose more when you get to university,” she explained.
She said that what the industry needs to do is “focus right at the beginning”.
“Firms should introduce as early as possible role models that aren’t typical of the people in that particular sphere, and confront some of the gender stereotypes that set in at a very young age.”
School outreach
Rajah spoke of the benefits of outreach in schools.
“Trying to provide more examples of case studies or role models to young kids as they are making decisions around their career would be very helpful.”
She explained that one of the challenges in the UK education system is that students might have to make decisions very young.
Therefore, she advised giving them a chance to “experience as much as possible in their teenage years to try and help guide them when they make those various decisions”.
Retention
The importance of retention was another subject discussed by Rajah as she provided an anecdote of speaking to a woman about the architecture profession.
“She was saying that, coming out of university, there’s a 50/50 split between boys and girls but, as people start going up through the ranks in their career, you start to see that balance filter out.
“Her rationale for that was because architecture firms are not typically structured in a particularly family friendly way.
“It can be quite difficult if you become a mother and you want to have a good work life balance to still be successful and progress in that field.”
Rajah therefore advised that retention is another issue firms “need to look at” which can be done by making sure that their policies don’t make it harder to retain equal balance.
Professional journey
Rajah told the story of her professional journey, explaining she had originally started in manufacturing.
“I spent the first 10 years of my life working for the confectionery company Mars, doing various different roles starting off in manufacturing, running factories, all sorts of unusual jobs.”
From there, Rajah pivoted into a different space and, since 2007, has been working in Fintech.
“I joined my first Fintech startup straight out of business school in 2007, which was a payments platform, before moving into consumer lending and various different lending platforms.”
After this she was approached by Alex Michelen, one of the co-founders of CapitalRise, to build a new digital based lending business in the property finance space.
“We started CapitalRise in 2016, that’s when we first started trading, and we’ve been going from strength to strength ever since.”
Transition
Despite not having any “strong roots” in the financial services industry before joining it, Rajah reported that she was able to make the transition fairly easily due to her past experience.
“When I was working at Mars, when I was running the factory, it was typically always in an all male team, the environment wasn’t particularly gender diverse.”
“For me, I think I’ve always had that feeling of being different to everybody else. I was often the only woman around the table or in the room or in the team so it’s something I'm very familiar with. “
tom.dunstan@ft.com
If you would like to be featured in our New Voices series, or you know someone who would be a good fit please get in touch with Tom Dunstan at tom.dunstan@ft.com
