After 20 years in financial services, Roxanne Goodman still feels "daunted" walking into events as a woman in the industry but she does feel like change is happening.
She runs Female Founder Finance, which was started around a year ago and links up business owners with women in the commercial finance industry.
With 20 years in the sector under her belt, Goodman said she still feels outnumbered as a woman.
She said: “Even now I get daunted walking into a finance conference or an expo, it is still probably 90 per cent men.
“We are trying to break that mould, I've got an all female team and we are trying to champion women in the finance industry as much as we can.
“The more women that are working in the funding institutions, the more women we've got to connect the clients up with.”
Goodman gave the example of one client who, when at a pitch for funding, was asked how she would manage the business as she had children.
In April this year, Female Founder Finance became fully authorised under the Financial Conduct Authority.
Goodman said: “It was so important for us to do that because that gives us the ability to be able to work with sole traders and partnerships, because they are the regulated entities.
“A lot of female led businesses start as sole traders so we didn't want to discriminate against them and say, ‘we can't help you, because we're not authorised’ - so that's why we went through that.”
She said not charging fees to founders makes the company unique, instead taking commission from the funders.
“That is massively important to me. Because of the big gender disparity in funding, we all know that women are desperate for funding to help the businesses scale.
“So me taking a piece of that back is not going to help level the playing field.”
‘There is a shift for women in finance”
Female Founder Finance has also set up networking groups in different regions across the UK.
Goodman added: “It is all about building the ecosystem so they can all support each other.”
It is through these networks and word of mouth referrals that the company gets clients on board.
More broadly, Goodman said the industry is starting to change with more women in senior positions.
She said the industry is also becoming more flexible for people who are parents.
Goodman, who has a five-year-old son herself, said: “I think traditionally, because the main caregiver role has been placed upon the woman within the family, that stereotype is hard to shift.
“My little boy is five and I started the business two years ago. It is a hard balance trying to be there as much as I can for him, but also wanting to do a really good job for my clients with meetings all over the country.”
She said the shift to working from home and flexibility has helped parents in the sector.
