FinTech Australia leads by example, overhauls board to meet gender and state targets
Members of the fintech industry association have elected six new board members to better represent geographical and gender diversity.
FinTech Australia, the industry association for fintech in Australia, has today announced that its members have elected a new board in a move to ensure gender diversity and representation across Australian states and territories.
These are key issues for the association, with research commissioned by the association last November finding that only 13% of fintech leaders are female and that women only averaged 22% representation in the workplace.
Members of FinTech Australia voted in six new board positions out of the nine-person board for a 12-month term. There were nine nominees, of which four were women.
Founder and managing director of Reinventure Group Simon Cant, who will continue as FinTech Australia director and was elected unopposed to continue as chair, was "delighted" about the new board appointments.
“We have undergone some important constitutional changes to promote representation from states right across Australia and also to guarantee that at least 30% of board members are women,” he said.
“We are very happy we have reached this gender diversity target with our new board and that nearly half of the nominees were women."
While gender diversity is an important issue in fintech not only in Australia but globally, state representation is also a much-contested topic.
“It is also exciting to now see board representation from every mainland Australian State, which reflects that we have strong and growing fintech hubs across all our capital cities – not just in Sydney and Melbourne."
Three directors will also be retiring from FinTech Australia as these six new directors come on board. The three retiring directors are CEO of Stone & Chalk Alex Scandurra, founder and CEO of Timelio Charlotte Petris and the founder and managing director of On-Market BookBuilds Nicholas Motteram.
The six newly appointed board members and their representative states are as follows:
- David Ball: CEO and co-founder of HyperBank (QLD)
- Natalie Dinsdale: Director of Marketing at Tyro (NSW)
- Luke Howes: Co-founder and CEO of Proviso (SA)
- Lucy Liu: Chief Operating Officer of Airwallex (VIC)
- Alan Tsen: CEO of The Week in Bitcoin (VIC)
- Emma Weston: Co-founder and CEO of AgriDigital (NSW)
