The Banking Tech Awards, hosted annually by FinTech Futures, spotlights the companies and industry champions who are revolutionising digital transformation across banking and financial services.
In the run-up to this year’s ceremony, taking place at London’s Royal Lancaster Hotel on 3 December 2025, FinTech Futures caught up with some of the nominees for the Women in Technology awards.
The Women in Technology awards are split into two categories: bank/financial institution and software and services provider. Here, FinTech Futures meets finalists for both categories, exploring their stories, achievements, and the ground-breaking contributions they’re making to advance technology and drive meaningful change in the financial services sector.
Nominee: Christine Tu, Morgan Stanley
Category: Woman in Technology – Bank/Financial Institution
Christine Tu is a managing director and head of AI and data for wealth management technology at Morgan Stanley, and has championed women-led innovation since joining the Wall Street firm back in 2019. This includes building Morgan Stanley’s AI Centre of Excellence from the ground up, developing shared AI infrastructure and services used across the entire firm, and helping to create a natural language knowledge assistant for wealth advisors, among other notable achievements.
Reflecting on her nomination for this year’s award, Tu tells FinTech Futures: “Throughout my career, I have prioritised giving back to my community – women engineers, immigrants to the US, people like me. It’s all about sponsorship, coaching, and leadership training, and working at a large Wall Street firm like Morgan Stanley has allowed me to hone and develop those skills and mentor employees at all stages of their technology careers.”
With this, Tu is particularly involved in a wide variety of structured mentor programmes, and actively encourages the growth and development of female leadership across the firm. “I feel very strongly about setting a good example,” she says. “It’s not just about helping more to learn and be curious, but also emphasising technology understanding, so they can advance their careers.”
Nominee: Gogutsa Gelashvili – TBC Bank
Category: Woman in Technology – Bank/Financial Institution
Also vying for this year’s trophy is Gogutsa Gelashvili, who currently serves as platform systems tribe lead at TBC Bank, headquartered in Tbilisi, Georgia. Gelashvili’s remit spans a wide variety of critical functions at TBC, including integration architecture, communication platforms, loan origination, and settlement infrastructure. The bank went on to record total assets of approximately $15.4 billion in June, marking a promising 17% year-on-year increase.
“I’m very glad to be a finalist,” Gelashvili tells FinTech Futures reflecting on her nomination. “This is my first participation in such an award, and I’m truly honoured by this recognition.”
When discussing women’s representation in banking technology, Gelashvili notes: “Sometimes there’s a perception in the world that women can’t manage or be leaders in certain areas.” However, she firmly believes in merit-based advancement: “I believe that women who work hard and are dedicated can become strong leaders and successfully manage complex systems and teams.”
Nominee: Shruti Patel, US Bank
Category: Woman in Technology – Bank/Financial Institution
Also among the line-up of nominees is banking executive Shruti Patel, who serves as chief product officer of business banking at US Bank. In her remit for the fifth largest bank in the US, her role encompasses “all of our core banking products like deposits, small dollar, large dollar lending, our payments capabilities, as well as all of our digital product capabilities”, Patel tells FinTech Futures.
Leading a team of approximately 1,300 employees, Patel emphasises the importance of diverse skill sets in product development. She looks for team members who can “think transformatively, because we are constantly thinking about evolving the organisation and pushing the status quo”.
Drawing from her own journey as a woman rising through major financial and technology institutions, Patel offers practical advice for women entering banking technology: “Don’t be afraid of stepping up to gnarly jobs. Some of those gnarly career choices propelled me to good and transformative jobs.”
Patel credits her career success to having “really good mentors and sponsors” and maintaining “a clear vision, a clear goal of the job and how I want to achieve success”.
Nominee: Julie Chatterjee, Northmill Bank
Category: Woman in Technology – Bank/Financial Institution
Julie Chatterjee, group CEO of Northmill Bank, was appointed to the top job at the Sweden-based neobank last Autumn, leading the group to a 95% year-on-year increase in profits by Q1 2025.
When discussing her nomination for the Banking Tech Awards with FinTech Futures, Chatterjee says that diverse leadership teams have a better understanding of their customer base. “We need to somehow also make the board or the management understand that 50% of their customers are also women,” she tells FinTech Futures. “So even if they don’t think from a cultural perspective, if they think from a business perspective, it’s good to have representatives of your customers in the boardroom in the management because they understand them better.”
Nominee: Barb Morgan, Temenos
Category: Woman in Technology – Software and Services Provider
Among the technology leaders featured in this year’s nominations is Temenos’ chief product and technology officer Barb Morgan, who has focused on developing the banking technology company’s global reach through cloud, data analytics, and AI-driven solutions since coming into the position in October 2024. Notable developments to emerge this year include Temenos’ Gen AI Copilot and the FCM AI Agent for sanctions screening – both of which were unveiled at the annual Temenos Community Forum in Madrid, Spain.
Should she be successful in winning the Woman in Technology award, Morgan tells FinTech Futures that she hopes to use the recognition to continue to inspire the next generation of female leaders. “Whenever I post on LinkedIn, a number of people always reach out and say, ‘I didn’t know women were in banking. How is it to be a woman in banking?’ That inspirational aspect to me is the most important part of an award like this,” she says.
Morgan also shared a powerful anecdote: “I was at the executive level at a company. Someone asked me to make copies for them. And this was up on our executive floor. He was assuming I was an EA on the floor. I went ahead and got his copies made and I brought them into the meeting room. But I was also in that meeting and so just to watch the redness of his face when he realised that he was actually going to be working for me was joy in and of itself.”
Looking ahead, Morgan maintains an optimistic perspective. “I would love to see in my lifetime when we don’t have to talk about women separately, when it isn’t a subgroup,” she says. “But until that time, I really think that it’s an important topic for us to cover.”
Nominee: Neha Narkhede, Oscilar
Category: Woman in Technology – Software and Services Provider
After scaling Confluent from a start-up to a $10 billion IPO, Neha Narkhede has turned her attention to tackling fragmented risk management in financial services through her latest venture, Oscilar, which she co-founded and leads as CEO. Since launching the Palo Alto-based company in 2021, Narkhede has built a unified AI-powered risk decisioning platform that consolidates fraud detection, credit underwriting, and compliance, now serving over 100 customers across banking and fintech.
Her continued innovation in solving complex industry challenges has earned her a prestigious nomination at the 2025 Banking Tech Awards. “After leading Confluent, I could have taken a step back, but I saw a massive opportunity in risk management,” Narkhede tells FinTech Futures. “I knew from my experience with Apache Kafka that when you unify disparate systems, you unlock exponential value. That’s exactly what we’ve done with the Oscilar platform.” With regard to her approach to leadership, Narkhede says she’s “always focused on solving problems that seemed impossible”, emphasising the importance of “showing other women that they can do the same”.
Narkhede is also a vocal advocate for addressing systemic barriers facing women in technology. “There’s a clear double standard in how the industry evaluates talent,” she says. “Women are judged purely on their track record, while men are often assessed on their future potential.”
“Lead with expertise and authenticity,” Narkhede continues. “Don’t wait for permission, build the thing you wish existed. The industry needs more women who are both builders and decision-makers shaping its future. When women lead with conviction and vision in technology, we elevate entire ecosystems.”
Nominee: Colleen Wilson, Best Egg
Category: Woman in Technology – Software and Services Provider
With nearly two decades of fintech industry experience, Colleen Wilson tells FinTech Futures that her career has always centred on what she describes as her “go first” mentality. Wilson is just over a year into her role at Best Egg, a Delaware-based digital lending platform she joined as chief product officer in September 2024, and currently oversees product development across the company’s entire suite, from personal loans to financial health management tools.
She says her approach to leadership has been shaped by a continued willingness to tackle uncharted territory throughout her career. “There are always going to be firsts in any career, and I’ve learned to see those as opportunities rather than obstacles,” Wilson says. “Being one of the few women in leadership means you’re often breaking new ground, but that also means you’re creating pathways for others to follow.”
Beyond her role at Best Egg, Wilson maintains active involvement within her local fintech community in Chicago, serving as co-chair of FinTech Women and participating in various mentorship programmes. She also provides career coaching for other women transitioning out of difficult situations, focusing on practical skills like salary negotiation and interview techniques. “Product development is fundamentally about solving problems and improving people’s lives,” she explains. “That same principle applies to mentorship. It’s about identifying what someone needs and helping them build the tools to get there.”
Nominee: Soruja Yasmin Mazumdar, Publicis Sapient
Category: Woman in Technology – Software and Services Provider
Also nominated at this year’s awards is Soruja Yasmin Mazumdar, senior director at Publicis Sapient and a seasoned product and delivery leader with over two decades of experience delivering modernisation of complex banking platforms across global financial institutions. In her current role as engagement lead for financial services clients, Mazumdar oversees delivery of digital business transformation programs across retail and commercial banking, risk, and data functions – scaling the team from scratch to over 1,000 professionals, with a strong focus on delivering speed, value, and quality while embedding AI-powered frameworks that drive meaningful innovation in banking.
Reflecting on her nomination in the 2025 Banking Tech Awards with FinTech Futures, Mazumdar describes it as “very humbling that I’ve been nominated by my team, and of course energising as well that I’m being recognised”. The nomination has also reinforced her sense of responsibility as a leader. “It also reiterates to me about the responsibility that we have as women leaders, to inspire others to get into this industry and aim higher,” she explains, adding that “I think now I’m challenged and encouraged to continue pushing boundaries in how we use innovation to create meaningful impact in banking and financial services”.
Mazumdar identifies a critical juncture in women’s careers where organisational and family support become essential: ” For women, once they move forward in life and start having children, this is often the stage when balancing professional commitments and family responsibilities becomes especially challenging, and it’s also where leaders can make a meaningful difference through support and mentorship.”
Nominee: Monica Eaton, Chargebacks911
Category: Woman in Technology – Software and Services Provider
Monica Eaton, founder and CEO of Chargebacks911 and its acquirer-focused sister brand Fi911, is also in the running for a Banking Technology Award this year. Eaton created Chargebacks911 back in 2012 and she has since grown the company to more than 400 specialists, recovering over £3.3 billion in revenue and protecting over 10 billion transactions to date. Aside from running both companies, Eaton is also heavily involved in a range of gender diversity initiatives, including the Fintech Diversity Radar and LIFT: Elevating Women in Fintech programmes.
For Eaton, promoting gender equality starts with creating the right culture within her own organisation. “We really try to have anybody that works for us have an unlimited opportunity,” she says in an interview with FinTech Futures. “There’s no glass ceilings, and it really doesn’t matter who you are. You need a very diverse team, first and foremost, to succeed in this environment.”
Speaking on her nomination, Eaton says: “It’s always great to have any type of accolades, but more importantly, I love the fact that there’s more attention on improving diversity and especially some of the innovators.” However, Eaton is quick to share the credit: “There’s no award that any entrepreneur receives that they actually think, ‘this is just me’. This is a testament to the incredible people I’m surrounded by and have the luxury to work with.”
Join us at the Banking Tech Awards 2025!
The winners of this year’s awards will be revealed at the highly anticipated awards ceremony on 3 December 2025 at the prestigious Royal Lancaster Hotel, London. Don’t miss your chance to be part of this landmark event honouring the best in banking technology, innovation, and leadership. Click here to book your table today and join us for a night to remember at the Banking Tech Awards 2025.
Source: https://www.fintechfutures.com/
