DISCOVER

About us

WiAS was created by Kate Webber, who has worked in the asset servicing sector for over 25 years. This was a direct result of her experience in the industry and the lack of women in more senior positions. Supported by her colleagues from Calastone and its CEO, Kate started talking with other women in the industry to identify what could be done to help increase the number of women in the asset servicing sector. Her first event was in October 2018, sponsored by Calastone.

During this meeting 4 key themes were established to form the basis of future events:

Recruiting and retaining women
Nurturing talent
Increasing female visibility in the industry
Attracting the next generation

WiAS was established to grow female representation across all levels of the financial services industry, including senior positions, an area of historic under-representation. It seeks to attract women to the sector, retain them within it, nurture their talent, increase their visibility within the industry and provide them with guidance and support to help achieve their career goals. In particular, we need to work with women and men to encourage them to be brave, to recognise and properly self-assess their talent and importantly to network. These softer skills are so vital throughout our careers, including early on and after often undervalued.

Mission

WiAS is a professional networking group empowering women to achieve success by facilitating relationships and discussing topics that improve career opportunities for its members with an aim to optimise the gender balance across the industry.

Vision

To help shape the future of asset servicing and make it a career of choice for all, by providing opportunities for development and valuable connections to facilitate member success through business and career growth.

Partnership with Embark

In March 2021, WiAS was excited to announce its partnership with Embark which involved practical day to day support and gave us an opportunity to raise our profile across the financial services sector and benefit from Embark’s scale and distribution network. Embark has also helped us in attracting speakers for events and promotion for WiAS through its social channels and newsletters. Together we are striving to achieve real change in diversity across the sector.

“Throughout your career, it’s critical to feel supported, and women’s networks have the potential to provide peer to peer support and build confidence amongst their members, as well as being a safe place for women to talk about the issues that mean most to them at work such as how to navigate work-life balance, build confidence and upskilling for promotion. Women in Asset Servicing provides that nurturing environment and is making great strides into helping to redress the gender imbalance that still persists in Financial Services.

Lloyds Banking Group is committed to becoming a leader in gender diversity and has a number of initiatives to support its female employees and ensure equality is at the heart of its business. I am a co-chair of Lloyd’s women’s employee network ‘Breakthrough’, the largest of its kind in the UK which shares the same values as Women in Asset Servicing. I am delighted to work with the WiAS network to support women with fulfilling their career potential and play a pivotal role in promoting Financial Services as a positive STEM career choice.”

Jackie Leiper, Chief Customer and Distribution Officer, Lloyds Banking Group

About Embark

Advisory Board and partnership team members

Kate Webber

Founder of WiAS & Chief Responsible Investment Solutions Officer at Principles for Responsible Investment

Kate is the founder of Women in Asset Servicing and has worked in the industry for over 25 years in a variety of roles including consulting and more recently strategy and product management.
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Gillian Hepburn

Commercial Director, Benchmark, Schroders & Member of the Advisory Board

Gillian has over 30 years’ experience in financial services and is Commercial Director at Benchmark having moved within the Schroders Group from Head of UK Intermediary Solutions where she was responsible for the award winning Schroder Investment Solutions.
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Alexis Goldfarb

Head of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Wellbeing, Nomura

As part of the Global Office for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Alexis leads the design and delivery of key DE&I programmes related to recruitment, retention and development across the region.

Laura Mann

Product Manager, Analytics Domain at a Tier One Asset Manager

Prior to starting her current role in 2022, Laura spent four years at Calastone exploring new product ideas, which followed over 12 years on the buy side participating in and leading a number of business transformation initiatives. Passionate about Diversity and Inclusion.
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Laura Bamfylde

Head of Advice Proposition, Hargreaves Lansdown, WiAS Member

Laura Bampfylde is a Head of Advice Proposition at Hargreaves Lansdown (HL) and is a member of the HL Advisory Services leadership team.
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Paul Chapman

Managing Director of Hornby Chapman, specialists in post-trade recruitment

Prior to founding HornbyChapman Ltd. with Victoria Hornby in 2006, Paul Chapman spent almost eighteen years in the asset servicing industry.
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Jackie Leiper

Chief Customer and Distribution Officer, Lloyds Banking Group and supporter of WiAS

Jackie has over 25 years’ experience in the financial services industry, with specialism in life and pensions, and a focus on leading customer and client facing teams.
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Sarah Sandle

Marketing Projects Manager, Embark, WiAS Member

Sarah has more than 20 years of experience in marketing and communications roles, both agency and client side across the charity, education, financial services and IT sectors.
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Chimmy Ngoma

Director of Presales, Jaid, WiAS member

Chimmy is the Director of Presales at Jaid, a leading AI company specialising in FinTech. With a background in Sales Enablement and a wealth of experience in the financial services sector.
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