This year, Mortgage Solutions has spoken to women across the financial services sector to mark International Women’s Week (3-9 March), which includes International Women’s Day (IWD) on 8 March.
The theme of this year’s campaign is Accelerate Action, meaning as well as celebrating the achievements of women and advocating for progress with issues that affect women, there is also a focus on how to speed up the rate of change and work towards a more inclusive, equal society.
Here, we speak to Cloe Atkinson, chief operating officer at Mortgage Brain.
Who are you and where do you work?
I am Cloe Atkinson, chief operating officer at Mortgage Brain.
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How long have you worked in financial services?
I started in financial services as a graduate at Santander in 2003, as part of the junior in the finance team, and worked my way through finance then moved into the mortgage team in 2007. I set up the finance team in the mortgage division, then I worked in operational risk and went on maternity leave. When I came back, there was an opportunity to look after some change projects, so I got into the product side of things and oversaw things like interest-only mortgage payments.
From there, an opportunity came up to be one of the founding members of The Mortgage Engine, when that was a funded project out of Santander; that’s when I really got into the tech side of things.
When did you realise financial services would be a career for you?
I have an aunt who was a real inspiration for me. She worked in financial services and banking as an accountant. She’s the reason I became an accountant and the reason I was looking for financial services roles as I graduated out of university. I saw how well she had done; she was a female in a very male-orientated environment and had done really well.
It was only later on that I realised how inspirational she actually was for me, because it meant I could see that was an option.
Do you feel like you worked harder than your male counterparts to get where you are?
I’m tough on myself; I have a constant feeling of: “I need to do better”. I had both my kids quite close together – there are two years between them. When I came back from maternity leave, it was verbalised that I needed to find a job that was less challenging for a few years while I had small children. It was a well-understood thing of: “Yes you’ve been successful, but now you’ve had your children, you should just pick something that’s easy”. There are definitely challenges of women being able to pitch their career at the same rate as men once they have a family. No one says to a man: “You’ve had a baby this year, maybe take a step back”. That just doesn’t happen.
Anyone coming into this industry thinking they’re going to get an easy ride is mistaken – it is hard work. I do think that we do have to work really hard to be recognised for our skills. I quite often feel like when I go into meetings, I have to prove where I’m adding value.
The theme of IWD this year is ‘Accelerate Action’, highlighting that there is still a long way to go until we reach genuine gender parity. Do you feel like the financial services sector is progressing at a satisfactory pace?
We are progressing. Until we get parity, you can’t say the pace is fast enough. It can’t be too fast, as far as I’m concerned.
When it comes to gender equality, where do you think financial services has done well?
Initiatives like the Diversity and Inclusivity Finance Forum are good. I’ve been around long enough to remember industry events where there was very inappropriate behaviour and it was just swept under the carpet. The fact we are calling out that behaviour as unacceptable is massive. The events I go to are completely different these days.
We’ve definitely improved our standing – we’ve seen some really strong female figures in our industry, far more than I used to see. We are moving in the right direction.
