ClearBank joins 30 other financial service companies in partnering with Code First Girls, keen to hire more women and eliminate the gender gap which still persists in fintech

ClearBank has become another institution eager to address the gender gap in fintech. Image: pixabay

ClearBank has joined the partner list of Code First Girls – the largest provider of free coding courses for women in the UK – in an attempt to boost female recruitment in fintech roles.

Code First Girls does not only educate women but also?works with over 100 partners globally to assist female coders in their job search. Many fintechs and traditional financial institutions, including Lloyds Banking Group, Morgan Stanley, NatWest, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America, cooperate with the Code First Girls social enterprise to reduce the gender diversity gap in the financial technology sector.

With the new partnership, ClearBank announced its intention to actively recruit female and non-binary coders. While proven benefits of gender equality at the workplace are numerous (creative problem-solving scenarios, performance improvements, enhanced innovation, etc), many banks ignore the opportunities.

Thus, recently the European Banking Authority (EBA) published its report on diversity practices in banking, noting the painfully slow progress of banks and investment firms in improving gender diversity policies. Furthermore, the regulator announced it wants supervisors across the EU to crack down on those non-compliers.

Managing the issue of the gender gap proactively will help ClearBank not only become more effective and competitive but also avoid all possible regulatory scrutiny. Besides, employing female tech professionals helps to optimize products to diverse target audience categories.

Currenly, 73% of women globally are unsatisfied with their banking services. At the same time, fintech products created by men aren’t always catering to women’s needs.

In 2022, Code First Girls provided 44,861 opportunities for women to learn how to code, while only 6,450 women acquired undergraduate computing degrees in the UK last year.