Only 23 companies in the Fortune 500 have a female CEO. Hershey is the only other company on that list that has women in both the CEO and CFO slots. American Water Works also has women in both jobs, although is not quite large enough to make the Fortune 500.

That makes GM the most significant company with this tandem..

Suryadevara, 38, joined GM in 2005 and has been vice president of corporate finance since July 2017. Gm said that she has played an integral role in some recent, major initiatives.

Suryadevara worked on the sale of Opel, its European division, in 2017. She helped with a $500 mn investment into Lyft, and worked to secure a $2.25 bn investment in GM’s self-driving car program from Softbank. She previously helped achieve ratings upgrades from all three credit agencies.

She will be replacing Chuck Stevens, who has been CFO since 2014.

“So few companies have women in both of those important positions simply because it’s rare to find women in either post,” said Anna Beninger, senior director of research and corporate engagement partner at Catalyst, a non-profit studying women and work.

“Any time a woman brings on another woman, it’s notable. It should be acknowledge, and celebrated,” she added.

The number of female CEOs at Fortune 500 companies has fallen by more than 25% since it hit a record high of 32 in early 2017. Several high-profile female CEOs have recently left their posts, including Marissa Mayer at Yahoo and Irene Rosenfeld at Mondelez last year. The trend continued in 2018, when Denise Morrison left Campbell Soup, Meg Whitman left Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Sheri McCoy left Avon.

The post GM to soon have a female CFO and CEO appeared first on International Finance.

While iwoca’s technology-driven risk platform draws on thousands of data points to make credit decisions, gender is not included. iwoca’s data scientists were able to calculate gender-based statistics on loan repayment rates by checking customer application forms for self-identified female titles and then comparing the approximate default rates for both cohorts.

By breaking down the barriers that stop Britain’s 5.5mn small businesses from accessing finance, iwoca aims to help small businesses reach their full potential thus driving economic growth for all. The company believes this is more necessary than ever as UK Finance data shows that the value of lending (loans and overdrafts) for UK Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) has contracted by 9.5% in the last three years. In contrast, lending to consumers grew by 9.6% year-on-year in October 2017.

Through more than 45,000 transactions, iwoca has issued over £350mn to more than 15,000 small businesses across the UK, Poland, and Germany. It is one of the fastest growing small business credit providers in Europe.

Christoph Rieche, Co-founder and CEO of iwoca, said: “More can be done to narrow the entrepreneurial gender gap in the UK. Making it easier for women to access business funding would go a long way to achieving that. Sadly, the reality is that banks are withdrawing critical finance from across the entire small business sector and unless the Government takes action to encourage greater competition that will allow alternative providers to fill the hole, women will continue to be at a greater disadvantage from an unfair system, regardless of their higher propensity to repay on time.”

The post iwoca finds female applicants prompt in repaying small business loans appeared first on International Finance.

Implications for taxi drivers
The most obvious short-term impact of this decision will be on the number of taxi drivers in the country. There are over 100,000 official taxi cars in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), including many private drivers employed by families, and most are driven by expats. Although it’s been some time since conventional taxi drivers started losing female customers to Uber and Careem drivers, both categories of drivers will face tougher times as effective demand is likely to drop, starting next year. Despite a lot of families in the Kingdom still preferring taxi services as a more comfortable mode of transport, as many as tens of thousands of taxi drivers could struggle next year to keep their businesses afloat.

New customers?
So, how many women could apply for a driving licence in the KSA? In the neighboring country Bahrain, women obtain up to 25% of all driving licences, and if we exclude expats, the number increases to 40%. The latter number will give a better indication since the KSA has lesser number of expats (33%) than Bahrain (52%).

Accordingly, up to 90,000-150,000 women would get driving licences in the KSA annually (currently, around 350,000-400,000 driving licences are issued to men in the Kingdom every year).

Initially, these numbers can be even higher as many women would rush to pass the driving test. About 4.5 million women in the KSA are between 20 to 34 years old (including Saudi and non-Saudi) and about 1.5 million women are employed. These women are likely to be the most active in applying for a driving licence.
Even if 50% of women receiving the driving licence will opt for owning a car (as opposed to sharing a family car or long-term rental), it would provide a solid boost to the new car market either directly or through used car purchases.

Changes in dealership strategy
As more women will be directly responsible for purchasing vehicles, dealers will have to realign their marketing strategies to make women more comfortable from the very beginning of their customer journey. It is a global challenge for most OEMs and their dealership networks need to start learning to properly capture the demand generated by women, and Saudi dealers will have to learn a lot in a very short time.

Redesigning waiting areas, hiring female consultants, making test drives more women-friendly are just a few beginnings of a new learning curve for OEMs and dealers. Surprisingly, this local change has the potential to have a longstanding impact on how OEMs and dealers sell cars to women globally, simply because so many dealers will have to face a significant jump in demand from one specific group of customers.

Aftersales is another area of opportunity for local dealers. Although many regular maintenance services are still likely to be done by male family members, the number of female customers engaging in the aftersales side of vehicle ownership will increase.

Socio-economic Impact
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is not the safest place to drive. Every year, roughly 7,500 people die in road accidents (230 deaths per 1 million people), which puts KSA significantly higher over the global average (180 deaths per 1 million people). However, allowing women to drive is expected to improve the level of road safety by initially replacing taxi drivers and later sharing driving responsibilities with other family members.
Statistics show that women tend to be safer drivers. Although there are now more women holding driving licences in the US, men accounted for over 70% of fatal crashes involving driver’s death in 2015. What’s more, the severity of accidents caused by men is usually higher than those caused by women.

With more women on the road replacing taxi drivers, road safety is expected to improve.

Boost for Saudisation
There is no doubt that Saudi women have been influencing car purchasing decisions, especially when it comes to family cars. However, now a whole new segment will open up for automotive dealers: cars bought and driven by Saudi women. The automotive dealers will need to realign their customer engagement journey with the unmet needs of female buyers.

Increasing mobility of Saudi women and their higher degree of integration into country’s economy is expected to have a strong positive impact on the country’s economy including achieving higher levels of Saudisation of the labour force.

Vitali Bielski is a Senior Consultant for Mobility Practice at Frost & Sullivan

The post Will Saudi women reshape mobility patterns? appeared first on International Finance.

Even though Google has pointed out that the data does not present a true picture considering that only around 1,200 of its 60,000 employees may have participated; it did not take into account location of employees, performance and whether the employees are in tech position, the company is facing intense scrutiny of its HR practices.

There is a perception that women are paid less than men in every sector. In the Information Technology sector, the number of women in tech jobs is perceived to be less than men. Recently, Google fired a computer engineer James Damore for ‘perpetuating gender stereotypes’. Damore had written and distributed a document which said the yawning gap in jobs and pay for male and female computer experts is partly due to biological causes such as ‘men’s higher drive for status’ and women being ‘more prone to anxiety’ rather than any biases.

The company was just about picking up the threads when the NYT came out with its article on pay disparity among female and male employees.

With the kind of profile Google enjoys on the global stage, the debate is not likely to die down soon. At the same time, the company is often cited as one of the best places to work. So, what could be the reason for having a fewer number of women in tech jobs.

This is a common trend across the tech sector. Do fewer women opt for tech education?
Some answers could be found in a survey of more than 1,000 university students, conducted by KPMG and independent market research company High Fliers. The findings reveal that young women face a crisis in confidence with regards to their digital skills.

The poll found that only 37% of young women are confident they have the tech skills needed by today’s employers, compared with 57% of young men. This is despite scoring on a par with their male counterparts when assessed on digital skills such as data manipulation and use of social media.

There is evidence that this lack of confidence could be putting many young women off applying for jobs: 73% of female respondents said they have not considered a graduate job in technology.

Here are some findings of the survey:

The post The reason why women don’t opt for tech jobs… appeared first on International Finance.