The bad news? European FinTech has a noticeable lack of women in charge. Despite being one of the most progressive emerging sectors, a 2019 report shows women make up only 30% of the FinTech workforce and 12 percent of FinTech founders.

The good news? More and more women are bridging this gap and joining FinTech firms across Europe. According to analysis of European data, Spain is the shining example with a doubling of the number of women in FinTech to 57% in 2019. Hot on their heels, Europe’s second-largest FinTech hub, Lithuania, boasts 60% of the sector’s firms having at least a third of their employees as women. 

Financial services no longer cater exclusively for wealthy white men, continuously evolving with advances in revolutionary technologies. The following list showcases the women making waves in the most highly-valued FinTechs across Europe. 

Amber Skinner-Jozefson | Chief Executive and Managing Director of Oakam

Ascending to the top role after only a year as the Chief Product and Marketing Officer, Amber Skinner-Jozefson leads the UK-based disruptive FinTech company Oakam. The FinTech adopts innovative technology to extend credit to the financially neglected and underbanked. 

She is particularly interested in the application of new technologies to unlock the potential of and within people, as well as democratising access to wealth-building tools to alleviate poverty and empower underrepresented communities. 

Karin Fuentesová | Founder and CEO of Digitoo

After 13 years in the accounting sector, Karin Fuentesová grew tired of the time wasted on mundane tasks. And so she decided to fix the problem by founding Digitoo, a FinTech which automates manual bookkeeping processes. 

In 2021 the Prague-based company raised 900k EUR in seed funding, the first pre-seed investment of this amount in a company led by a single female founder. 

Sofie Quidenus-Wahlforss | Founder and Chief Executive of omni:us

Starting her first business aged 21, a book scanner used to digitise 3 million books across 125 countries, Sofie Quidenus-Wahlforss founded her latest venture omni:us in 2015. The Berlin-based FinTech aims to streamline sectors like insurance with AI that is capable of reading handwriting and analysing vast swathes of business data. 

Featured on the Forbes 2018 global list of Top 50 Women in Tech, Quidenus-Wahlforss knows her stuff. She now sits on the German Government advisory board for advanced technology and artificial intelligence. 

Marie Assé | Co-Founder and CEO of Clustdoc

Bouncing around various product roles in banking and FinTech, Marie Assé went on to found her own startup Clustdoc in 2019. Based in Paris, Clustdoc is a client onboarding automation platform used by financial services in 70+ countries to streamline routine client-facing processes.

So far Assé has raised $850k in pre-seed funding from InReach Ventures, January Ventures, and Google for Startups.

Camilla Giesecke | Chief Expansion Officer of Klarna

A former J.P Morgan analyst, Camilla Giesecke joined the Swedish “buy now, pay later” startup in 2017. Rising swiftly through the ranks, she was promoted to Chief Financial Officer within eight months. After four years as Klarna CFO she is now taking the lead as Chief Expansion Officer and will be driving Klarna’s international expansion. 

June Felix | Chief Executive Officer of IG Group

With almost three decades of experience in the digital and finance sectors, June Felix now serves as CEO of IG Global, a UK-based top global online trading and investment service. 

In 2013, June was awarded the Edison Award for Innovation and later was selected into the Most Influential Women in PaymentSource and SourceMedia. She now sits on the panel for Women for Women International and supports Pan Asian Women’s Association.

Aiga Senftleben | Co-Founder and General Counsel of Billie

Aiga Senftleben co-founded the FinTech Billie in 2016, another leading provider of “buy now, pay later” payment methods for businesses. As a licensed attorney, she is responsible for the Legal and Compliance and People departments at Billie. 

Dedicated to the issues of equality and diversity, the Berlin FinTech has 35% of women in the leadership team and at management level thanks to Senftleben. Her studies and measures have also pushed the start-up to become one of the few companies in Germany to close the gender pay gap. 

Sara Koslinska | Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Limitless

A serial entrepreneur, Forbes 30 under 30 and recognised Founder of the Year CEE by Global Startup Awards, Amsterdam- based Sara Koslinka is helping millennials reach their financial goals. 

Her micro-investment app, Limitless, helps millennials to invest their money sensibly by taking away the large barriers of normal investing and helping banks engage with a sometimes hard-to-reach audience. 

If these women don’t close the gender gap in tech, we don’t know what will. To read more about women dominating the tech industry, check out 7 women in MedTech you need to know about here.