A diverse workplace is a better workplace: Interview with Silvia Mensdorff-Pouilly, SVP Banking & Payments at FIS

By Gaia Lamperti

When Silvia Mensdorff-Pouilly started her career in technology about 20 years ago, every single panel she listened to was a “manel”; at every single conference she was attending there were only men. “Even when there were 300 people in the room, I was the only woman in the group,” she said. But now Mensdorff-Pouilly, who today is SVP Banking & Payments Europe at FIS, thinks a lot has changed.

IBS Intelligence met her and discussed her first year at FIS, the trends she is seeing in the Payments space and her activism around gender imbalance in the industry which led her to start the European Women Payments Network. 

FIS powers solutions across merchants, banking and capital markets, how are you adding value to create a better banking system for the future? 

It’s really that broad spectrum of solutions that allows us to tackle customers problems very specifically. So, when you look at my space, Payments, we have solutions for parts, really end to end processing for card issuers. We also provide technical acquiring processing and payments as a service, and I think the interesting thing that we’re looking at the moment is where cards and payments come together and how we can bring payments to a point of sale. And then obviously Core Banking is another great category and we’ve recently launched the modern banking platform which is basically creating a core banking ecosystem that allows a bank to build a modern platform in the Cloud. In the USA, FIS is very much a household name and in Europe, we are better known by the parts of our business than the full bracket, we’re almost a well-kept secret, but we need to change that.  

As you are monitoring the industry, what are some of the changes you are witnessing and that we can expect to continue in the next few years?  

I think that a couple of things are happening. Banks are finally waking up, realising that they absolutely need to upgrade their technology to the Cloud. FIS has the experience to manage those types of migrations very, very effectively, that’s where we truly excel. On the other hand, I would say that by now, the industry has talked about cards and payments coming together for more than 10 years. That’s never happened, but we’re actually looking now at the coming out of proof of concepts that are really helping that transition happen, and we know that there is a massive value to be created here. The actual additional value lies in the added services that you can then sell on top and the data analysis that you could potentially do on the information that would come out of these transactions. So, you know, we haven’t even touched the tip of the iceberg. To make it happen, I think that it does require a deeper link between the merchant and the consumer. Other trends I see a lot is that of banks looking at outsourcing their card issuing, not just credit card, which has been traditionally an outsourced field across Europe, but we’re also looking at debit cards as kind of the next thing. Obviously, cryptocurrencies, and more importantly, Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) are on the horizon but it’ll probably take 5 to 10 years before they truly become mainstream. We recently signed a deal with CEX.IO, which is a cryptocurrency exchange, and what they want to do is issue cards for their customers so that they can then use those cards to actually get the assets in their current crypto accounts.  Another really interesting customer that we have is GoHenry, their whole solution is based on a FIS stack and we’re working with them to help them expand and I was so excited to see that go ahead because obviously from a financial inclusion and educational perspective, that kind aligns very much with what my backlog and goals of providing better banking services and better payment services.  

Talking about goals, what are some of the ESG commitments that FIS has been putting in place recently and that you would like to comment on?  

We’ve issued our latest ESG report and one of the things I’m really, really excited about is that FIS is committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2025. And that means that when you were investing and using us to deliver your processing as a customer, we’re basically making sure that our processing centres are carbon-neutral, which I think is a fantastic, fantastic goal. The other piece I’m really excited about is the drive for diversity, from the bottom up to the top the support for diversity is great. This is a very important topic for as, as you may know, a couple of years ago, together with two other women, I have founded the European Woman Payments Network (EWPN), which is a non-profit organisation and it has been amazing to see the response of the industry to that.  

How do you feel about the way the FinTech industry is addressing the gender imbalance issue? 

Well, some of the things that I experience at the beginning of my career are just completely unthinkable now. I used to be the only woman in the room, but nowadays, that’s usually no longer the case, and I think that’s fantastic. I think men too realised the importance of creating an equal environment. It’s not just about empowering women but it’s about empowering men too, only if they can be supportive, we can solve this problem. But my main point is that the work environment will never be equal as long as the only people going on maternity leave are women, it breaks their careers. So, I think if governments were serious about solving the gender pay gap and ensuring equality, then then the final frontier is actually to say that both women and men go on maternity and paternity leave. Some countries do is but is still a minority. And where they do it, you can actually see the pay gap significantly reducing and the leadership positions, being a lot more equal. It cannot be taboo, it has to be addressed. 

It is surely very positive that we are seeing more and more women entering the industry but still, there is a great imbalance when it comes to executive positions, how do we tackle that?  

Well, it takes time, right? One thing we can tackle is corporate culture, there are always companies out there that just don’t get it, but I think those are the minority now. At the end of the day, I think it goes back to the regulators. I am in favour of quotas until the problem is tackled because that way it’s just easier to hire. I think most of the time the intention is there, but it’s really tough to find the real person that can fill those positions. Some women don’t like it because they’re like, well, I need to be hired for my worth, but in my view, we are just forcing the hands so that we can accelerate that for sure.  

And how can the women already working in the sector, become a role model for future talents and support each other’s success?  

I think that mentoring other women to help them in their careers is a great way to create a support network. We have a mentorship program within the European Women Payments Network. My advice is also to find yourself a sponsor, someone that when you are not in the group can push forward you and your work. Also, we women in the industry, have the responsibility of not pulling each other down, consciously or unconsciously. It’s a collaborative process but I’m very positive and I believe that companies have understood that a diverse workplace is a better workplace.