Exclusive: Women account for just 26% of senior leadership roles in cross-border payments

• FXC Intelligence published an industry-first report today investigating female representation in senior roles in the cross-border payments industry.
• The report found that women account for just 26% of senior leadership roles in the assessed companies.
• This comes as Ida Rolek-Kononiuk, VP of Technology at FXC Intelligence, has been selected for Money20/20 Europe’s exclusive 2024 RiseUp cohort, with Lucy Ingham, Editor-in-Chief and Head of Content at FXC Intelligence, delivering a presentation at the event called ‘What We Got Wrong About Superapps’.

Today, FXC Intelligence published an industry-first report investigating the representation of women across senior leadership roles in the cross-border payments industry. 

Analysing more than 80 of the most important companies in the space and covering a combined total of 1,074 senior leadership roles, the report found that of the positions assessed, 791 were held by men, while 283 were held by women. This means that women account for 26% – just above a quarter.

Of the companies reviewed, seven (8.5%) had no women in senior leadership roles, while 10 (12.2%) had only one woman. This means that one in five of the assessed companies had one or less women in their senior leadership positions.

People and HR positions accounted for the highest representation of senior positions held by women and were the only role type held by 30 or more people where women accounted for more than half of those in the category, at 73%. Without HR-related positions, women account for just 23% of all leadership positions in the space.

These results are below other key industry measures. For example, the HM Treasury Women in Finance Charter reported that its signatories averaged 35% female representation in 2024, up from 34% in 2022. It is also well below targets set by many players in the wider finance industry, which vary by company but generally sit between 35% and 50%. 

This report comes as FXC Intelligence, whose senior leadership team is made up of 44% women, achieved a number of milestones at Money20/20 Europe this week. Ida Rolek-Kononiuk, VP of Technology at FXC Intelligence, secured a spot in Money20/20’s RiseUp cohort, a prestigious programme designed to empower women and non-binary leaders in fintech. Lucy Ingham, Editor-in-Chief and Head of Content at FXC Intelligence, also delivered a presentation at the event called ‘What We Got Wrong About Superapps’. 

Ahead of attending the event, report author Lucy Ingham, Editor-in-Chief and Head of Content, said:

“This report has some details for the cross-border payments industry to be proud of, and it is encouraging to see women like myself and my colleague Ida increasingly represented at events like Money20/20 Europe, which work hard to amplify women’s voices to an industry dominated by men, particularly through the RiseUp initiative.

“However, it is clear that there is room for improvement when it comes to women’s representation in senior leadership, particularly when it comes to early-stage companies as well as those who are more established.

“This report is the first in a multi-year assessment of the space and designed to provide measurable data for the industry to benchmark itself against and work to improve on.”

To read the report in full, click here. If you are interested in meeting with Ida, Lucy or other members of the FXC Intelligence leadership team including Daniel Webber, CEO and Founder of FXC Intelligence, at Money20/20 or after please reach out here. 

Further information: 

• The companies selected for the report are the organisations identified in FXC Intelligence’s Cross-Border Payments 100 as the currently most impactful players in the industry. They were selected due to their influence on the wider sector, making their performance in this area highly important to the industry as a whole, but also as they are fairly diverse in terms of their size, areas of focus, markets and headquarters. 
• In order to ensure we provided a fair assessment of each company, we took senior leadership to mean the people listed on each company’s website under ‘executive leadership’ or similar.
• In a minority of cases – 22 – such information was not publicly available on the company’s website or in other materials published elsewhere by the company. In these cases, we reached out directly to the companies to ask them to provide us with the full details of their executives for use in this research. Four out of the 22 provided us with this information, resulting in a final count of 82 companies that we had sufficient information on to assess as part of this research, with a combined total of 1,074 roles captured in May 2024.

About us:

• FXC Intelligence is the industry leader in cross-border payments data and intelligence.
• The world's biggest banks, payments and big tech companies use our critical data to make vital decisions that shape their day-to-day operations, product development and strategy.
• Our data is also used by a number of international bodies, including the World Bank and the Financial Stability Board, to provide the most important indices in the sector.
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Kezia Johnson
External Communications and Branding Manager
kjohnson@fxcintel.com