People and Accessibility

The female perspective is a catalyst for innovation in technology’s male-dominated landscape. We’re capable of cultivating curiosity and thinking differently to reach the desired goal.

Penny Roberts
Director of Partnerships & Co-Founder
BankAbility

Building trust through digital accessibility
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Digital accessibility is about removing barriers to make digital content accessible for everyone, especially those with disabilities. This is particularly relevant within the banking industry which has changed drastically in recent years. During this time, 50% of branches have closed across Europe as banks look to increase profit by pushing customers to digital banking¹ − making it an essential part of everyday life. However, many vulnerable users find banking apps inaccessible − with 43% of UK adults with access needs not using banking apps to manage their finances². This can lead to frustration, mental health issues, reduced independence and financial exclusion.

Having done extensive research into the millions of people impacted by digital banking inaccessibility, and being inspired by my son who is dyslexic and autistic, I made it my mission to do something about it! That’s where the idea of BankAbility was born − to create a ‘accessibility first’ Open Banking solution that automatically optimises the user-experience for everyone regardless of disability, age, device or operating system. The BankAbility app is yet to launch, but we’re confident that it will be a gamechanger for people with sensory, neurological, and physical disabilities. It also comes at a critical time as the European Accessibility Act (EAA) is introduced in June 2025 − forcing EU banking services to change.

Key to the success of our app will be building trust with users. This is something we plan to do through regular reassurance about security, user-friendly design, and reliable Customer Support teams who are trained to understand digital accessibility needs. We’ll also provide educational tools to help people manage their finances more efficiently, and a community forum to encourage feedback and engagement.

^{1 Almost half of the UK’s bank branches are gone – it’s now or never to halt the cash crisis}
^{2 Click-Away Pound Survey}

Learn more about BankAbility here

Using GenAI to enhance accessibility and fight financial
crime
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The availability of GenAI provides opportunities to unlock inclusive experiences through creating content that’s tailored to accessibility needs and evaluating software for compliance with accessibility standards. For example, developers can harness GenAI to produce speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and/or image-to-text explanations for those with hearing or sight impairments. It can also use algorithms to identify accessibility issues like text legibility, navigation, and colour contrast.

This is something we’re passionate about at Feedzai and keep front of mind when designing datasets to help firms fight financial crime. Data scientists use our platform to build machine learning to stop fraudsters, and our investigators use fraudster trends to create rules to stop future attacks. Data visualisation is crucial to this process to help spot patterns and obscure data, but has historically

been challenging to make accessible. This is particularly the case for those relying on screen readers because the page’s HTML is not structured in a way that allows the screen reader technology to read the visual information from graphs.

To address this, we developed a tool called AutoVizuA11y that automates the addition of accessibility features in charts, which allows users to navigate seamlessly and quickly with rapid access to statistical insights and navigation options. The tool also provides better descriptions of data by supporting automatic descriptions that are generated via OpenAI’s API. Screen reader users will also be informed if the description they are hearing is automatically generated.

Learn more about Feedzai here

We are investing in accessibility with GenAI and sharing our tools in open-source so that others can build upon them.

Pedro Bizarro
Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer,
Feedzai

Enabling equitable career progression

Investing in female talent is critical as the gender gap increases in the workplace from entry level to leadership1 − especially following a year where the gap widened across European Financial Services Boardrooms2.

Having recognised barriers to career progression facing women in the workplace, particularly at the mid-management career level, the EY Italy Insurance Tech Hub decided to make a change by developing the Road to Senior Manager+ (RTSM+) program.

The RTSM+ program aims to develop female talent through providing opportunities for coaching, role modelling, mentorship and community events that strengthen the team’s sense of belonging as part of a supportive network.

Not only does the program focus on individual development, but on crafting job roles that are inclusive and accessible to women across their career, including, but not limited to, parenthood.

In five years since launching the program, the team has quadrupled their amount of female senior managers and increased gender representation at the Director level by 33% − demonstrating the progress made by the program.

^{1Economic shocks are wiping out progress on gender equality}
^{2 Female appointments to European financial services boardrooms fell year-on-year in 2023}

Having a credible ally to trust in the RTSM+ program made it possible, and being a part of this network has helped me to achieve my goals personally and professionally.

Chiara Salvai
Director,
Technology Consulting
EY Advisory S.p.A

Supporting female career accessibility and progression

Linn Loly, Director, Technology Consulting and member of the Nordics Career Watch program as a “watchee” since 2020 tells us about her experience of the program …

Career Watch is a sponsorship program to support female career progression through mentorship and workshops. The program has helped me grow my professional network, and enabled new learning opportunities related to technology, but also financial services as a whole. On a personal level, my sponsor has been very helpful in advising me on how to navigate both my career and personal wellness when embarking on a new part of life - starting a family.

I find that one of the most important initiatives in the program is the opportunity to have an experienced sponsor to help you navigate through the ups and downs of your career. Whether informal or formal, I always encourage the people I work with to establish similar relationships, and really take use of other’s experiences, while also having a “safe” spot to vent if necessary.

Linn Loly
Director, Technology Consulting
Ernst & Young SA

Using Storytelling to Build Psychological Safety

Margit Vunder, DE&I Project Lead at Ernst & Young AG in Switzerland explains the power of storytelling in shifting bias, driving awareness of other’s experiences and supporting a more diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace.

Storytelling is one of the most powerful forms of communication; it grabs our attention, raises empathy and opens new perspectives. Hearing true stories from real colleagues raises awareness, allows leaders to explore experiences through a different lens, and makes building psychological safety part of the leadership culture.

Our experience is that storytelling achieves this by:

Collaborating in tech to design digital learning to mitigate risk
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The pace at which regulations change and risks evolve is rapid in this new digital era. As such, it’s critical that financial services firms respond by providing their workforce with dynamic digital learning to upskill them for the future, and protect the organization against emerging risks.

However, risk and regulatory learning can be stigmatized for being too transactional.

In order to change this perception, we need to create learning that uses the latest technology to increase engagement and drive real behavioral change.

At EY, we have a global network of risk, regulatory and learning professionals that have years of experience delivering transformational change and programs at scale.

When you combine this with Media Zoo’s creativity and innovative technology for digital learning, it results in the creation of top-quality content and memorable learning experiences that drive real business impact.

Elizabeth McLeod
Senior Manager, People Consulting
Ernst & Young LLP

The impact of partnering in tech to upskill

The Microsoft Power Platform is a collaboration between EY and Microsoft, comprising of several tools including Microsoft Power Apps. These solutions help organizations automate processes, develop applications quickly and analyze data visually to enhance consumer interactions. Listen to the video on the right to hear how Technology Consultant Giorgia Arrigoni benefitted from using the platform and how the training helped her use technology safely and responsibly.

Why upskilling in tech is crucial for audit professionals

As someone who works in Audit, I think that upskilling in tech is crucial nowadays due to the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Tech competency plays a pivotal role when assessing the reliability of data or identifying potential risks and vulnerabilities.

This is especially true when auditing financial technologies companies.

Without technological proficiency, auditors risk falling behind and potentially impacting the quality of their work.

Participating in the Power Platform training allowed me to discover a new set of tools from Microsoft (Power BI, Power Apps, Power Automate and Power Virtual Agents) that I would not have learnt in my day-to-day tasks.

On the professional side, it helped me understand how clients could use those tools

to drive business intelligence and automate processes, and how auditors could leverage from this. On the other hand, this training helped me gain skills that could expand my career opportunities.

Power Platform applications are proficient tools to manage, compile and share data. While those tools provide valuable insights, the data might be considered as confidential and sensitive.

The training emphasizes the importance of managing and protecting data and teaches ways to maintain confidentiality, for instance, with Power BI's features allowing users to share reports only with authorized people.

Tina Du
Staff/Assistant
Audit
Ernst & Young S.A