Every Voice Matters
- Raj Hayer
- 17 hours ago
- 9 min read
How Diversification Fuels Inclusive Innovation in Finance
First presented at"The Expense Summit" with Mobilexpense
You might already be thinking it. Another woman talking about diversity.
What does this have to do with finance, with expense management, with innovation that actually moves the needles we are all measured by. Our Founder and CEO, Raj Hayer’s goal is simple. To show you that diversity does not belong in a side conversation. It belongs at the center of financial innovation. It is not a moral add on. It is a strategic advantage and a repeatable discipline that protects against risk, unlocks trust, and compounds returns.
“I believe that diversity includes all of us. And inclusive innovation is a possibility for every organisation.”
As the founder of Tiny Box Academy, a creative think tank for innovation, she has three decades in management, fifteen of those in financial services. She has studied and worked across markets, delivered multi million dollar programs, and coached leaders who influence at scale. And like every person on your team, she brings layers of visible and invisible diversity that shape how she thinks, decides, and leads. Some of that you can see. Some you cannot. That is the same for your people. The question is whether you are leveraging those layers or leaving value on the table.
The unseen inventory of talent
We label almost instantly.
Woman ✔️
Person of colour ✔️
Mature professional ✔️
Immigrant ✔️
Our brains take shorthand from decades of lived experience and draw conclusions before the first meeting ends. Yet the real signal is usually in what you cannot see.
For instance -
She is also British and Canadian and understand those markets deeply.
She has survived a car accident and open heart surgery which sharpened her resilience, her decisiveness, and her appetite for transformation.
She has a professional preference for autonomy.
Her belief in flat structures makes her effective in complex stakeholder environments.
You would not know the level of diversity in a human being just by scanning a profile picture.
“How much do you know about the individuals on your team? Are you leveraging them as well as you could be.”
When we do not tap the actual strengths of our people, we pay for it.
Talent acquisition in financial services is expensive.
Underutilisation is even more expensive.
Raj has lived both sides, feeling effective and feeling useless. In one role, she had full autonomy to launch a national mystery shop across every branch in Canada. Because we included even the most remote locations, people felt part of the bank for the first time. Ten minute standup meetings surfaced a simple idea that saved two million dollars by consolidating a delivery platform. In another role, she was hired for change but assigned to slide formatting. she left quickly. Most people would.
Technology solves less than you think
Years ago when working in real estate secured lending, Raj and her team found many mortgage declines boiled down to a knowledge gap. Applicants did not know their credit bureau details and the data often did not match so they were denied a mortgage. We pushed the bureau data into the application to support instant adjudication.
The technology was easy. The hard part was people.
The room was full of experts from legal, risk, compliance, product, marketing, sales, and the bureau. Yet the most relevant voices were missing. We needed frontline staff who would actually use the application. Once they were in the room, the solution changed. The four screen process became four clicks and the interface turned toward the customer with transparency and trust.
“This is the problem. Sometimes we do not have the right people in the room. Or we have the right people and we are not listening.”
People are the core component of any change or innovation. Not a component. The core. Which means leadership has two jobs. Attract the right mix of talent. Then unleash it.
Why finance must rebuild trust and widen the room
There is a reason diversity lags in financial services. Trust has eroded. Trust in banks has historically been low due to transparency gaps. Now we are adding digital and seeing similar skepticism. Trust in digital payments hovers at just over one half. Confidence in online wealth advisory is lower still.
Meanwhile traditional services are being disrupted at pace. Stakeholders voice a clear critique. Financial services were designed for the needs of a few, not for all. Many do not see a shared vision and many from diverse backgrounds do not see themselves in the sector. That is a talent pipeline problem and it is a relevance problem.
“Social Leadership is the currency of trust.”
Leaders can change that narrative. Social Leadership is not vanity posting. It is the practice of showing up where your stakeholders actually are, speaking transparently about what you value, and building relationships across the ecosystem.
Eighty two percent of candidates scan LinkedIn before considering a role. They look past the logo to the leaders and employees.
They are asking a simple question– do your words and actions align? A visibly diverse leadership team signals intent. Visible participation signals accountability.
Three practices that compound trust and talent attraction
Lead for inclusion, design for participation, measure for trust
First, Social Representation.
Clarify and share your values. Stakeholders do care. Most people choose where to work and where to invest based on alignment with beliefs and values. You cannot earn alignment if you never say what you stand for. When leaders articulate values and match them with decisions, trust compounds. Consider Dan Price at Gravity Payments who tied compensation to dignity and cut his own pay to raise the floor. Revenue grew significantly over six years. Retention soared. Applications now arrive by the hundreds through referral alone. You may make different choices. The point is clarity and congruence build credibility.
Second, Social Participation.
Engage and be personally visible. People follow people. Social participation is the new leadership competence. Eight out of ten stakeholders believe leaders should be personally visible online. Brands like Dropbox amplify employee voices, highlighting lived experiences and everyday contributions. Employees become credible advocates, and culture becomes legible to the market.
Third, Social Responsibility.
Connect your voice to a larger purpose. Customers expect leaders to speak on societal issues, from equitable growth to environmental impact to gender equality. When teams volunteer for programs like Habitat for Humanity, they do not just build walls. They build trust, cohesion, and a shared story about why the work matters. That shared story travels across your network and attracts the right people.
From diversity to inclusive innovation
Attracting talent is the first step. Engaging that talent is where inclusive innovation happens. Inclusive innovation means the people affected by a solution help design it and benefit from it. It starts with a clear view of what diversity really is.
“Think of diversification as a financial principle applied to people.”
In a portfolio, diversification reduces risk and smooths returns. In a workforce, diversification does the same. The visible pieces matter, such as gender, age, and ethnicity. The secondary pieces matter, such as education and parental status. The invisible pieces are the unlock. Work styles. Energy patterns. Decision making preferences. Convergent and divergent thinking. Introversion and extraversion. Conflict approaches. Cultural norms. Organisational contexts. When you understand and manage these, you create the conditions where different minds can do their best work together.
“I always start with humans first. Treat every person as an individual. Then design the work so their differences become an advantage.”
Consider the introvert placed in a culture built around open plan floors, constant coffee chats, and performative collaboration. That person may be one of your best long term relationship builders and still drain out by three in the afternoon. In one study Raj led, the only introvert in a two hundred and seventy nine person sales organisation had the best revenue and the longest client retention. He did not fit the dominant mold. He outperformed it. When you know this, you stop confusing sameness with strength.
There is also a measurable diversity dividend. We build safer, more inclusive products and services when the right people are in the room. Automotive testing that ignores female bodies has had tragic consequences. The same logic applies in finance. When design is dominated by one profile, blind spots multiply. When design includes the spectrum of users, resilience increases and opportunity grows. The numbers back this up across studies.
Greater diversity correlates with higher return on sales, higher operating margin, higher earnings per share, and higher return on investment.
Case studies that connect diversity to outcomes
Ant Financial’s Sesame Credit in China expanded credit access for millions by looking beyond conventional files. The team brought together data science, behavioral psychology, local market expertise, and financial acumen. They used alternative signals such as online buying behavior to assess risk and partnered to underwrite balances. The result was a low delinquency rate and a path to inclusion for consumers lacking traditional histories. That is inclusive innovation grounded in diverse capability.
M Pesa began in Kenya in two thousand and seven with technologists, anthropologists, and local finance leaders working together. Safaricom committed to gender representation in management and reached women who had been excluded from formal financial flows. Today M Pesa serves tens of millions of users and processes billions of transactions. Women receiving funds directly to a wallet gained independence, security, and dignity. That is what happens when the right voices design the rails.
MSCI accelerated performance after embracing diverse by design teams in two thousand and twenty. Employees across demographics, roles, and levels contributed to a hybrid model built for reality. Over three years the firm saw significant gains in revenue and net income. Correlation is not causation, yet the direction is consistent with the wider evidence base.
Dell’s Connected Workplace gave people agency over where and when they work while maintaining collaboration and connection. The business impact showed up in productivity, cost reduction, and talent attraction. People design their work around life and repay the trust.
Mobilexpense demonstrates how a globally diverse team and a partner ecosystem create compounding advantage. With nearly thirty nationalities and strong female representation, software teams across countries, and in-house compliance expertise, they have built a flexible expense management platform that navigates multiple currencies and regulations. The app has been downloaded more than one and a half million times and processes close to two billion in travel expenses every year. Controllers save meaningful time and companies benefit from an ecosystem approach that integrates the best complementary services. This is financial innovation as a team sport, played across a diverse field.
What can you do today?
Start where you are. Start by being honest with yourself and your team, acknowledge where you are and build from there.
Build leader self awareness so you understand your own preferences and how they show up under pressure.
Share your values publicly and act on them consistently.
Bring the right people into the room early, especially your frontline staff and your end users.
Replace long monologues with short, structured rituals where every voice is heard.
Use failure sharing to normalise learning.
Run “Start with why” workshops so teams align to a purpose they can own.
When quotas are used, treat them as accountability tools rather than finish lines, and then build the culture that makes quotas obsolete.
“If leading were easy, everyone would be doing it. The work is to create the environment, then step back and let your people solve.”
The future of work in Europe and beyond is constrained by demographics. By the middle of the century, the continent will face a shortage of working age adults. The firms that win will not be the ones that shout the loudest.
The firms that win will be the ones that attract talent others overlook, build cultures where difference is an advantage, and architect ecosystems where partners compound value together.
They will practice Social Leadership, design for inclusive innovation, and treat their people portfolio with the same rigour they apply to capital allocation. As Raj says, “To build a company, increase profitability, beat the competition and sustain impact, it takes a lot of ingredients working together toward the same strategic goal."
Create a portfolio of talent, then invest in it. Build inclusive innovation that creates participation and benefits for all, and be where your employees and your clients are. Lead with Social Leadership that earns trust, learn to leverage every perspective and every voice.
In the end, every voice matters.
References
Edelman Trust Barometer. Global insights on trust in industries and digital services.
LinkedIn Talent Solutions. Candidate research on employer evaluation and leader visibility.
Forrester Research. Sales performance and diversity correlations.
Harvard Business Review. Market share growth and diverse teams; Bring best self to work
McKinsey: Research on the diversity dividend; Delivering through diversityInsurance Institute for Highway Safety. Summary on injury risk differences
Consumer report. Report on female crash test dummies.
Case study sources mentioned in the talk.
Gravity Payments. The seventy thousand dollar minimum salary; NPR coverageAnt Group and Sesame Credit. Background on Zhima Credit and the use of alternative data for credit scoring ; Alibaba’s explainer on Zhima CreditM PESA impact and metrics: Safaricom and Vodafone provide adoption and transaction statistics, along with inclusive finance outcomes; M PESA overview
MSCI. Diverse by design teams and financial resultsDell. Connected Workplace Program; Future of work resourcesDropbox. Employee advocacy LinkedIn example
Mobilexpense. Product and ecosystem
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