Innovation with Intuition: Women Steering the Future of Finance

Abbie Casanova has over 25 years of experience in consumer banking, leading and scaling various consumer finance, credit card, and lending portfolios. She has served in top leadership positions in both multinationals and national banks and has spearheaded expansion, productivity, and innovation with the customer in mind.

In a thought-provoking interaction with the Global Woman Leader Magazine, Abigail shares her views on empowering women leaders in consumer lending- explaining that routines and data-driven innovation, coupled with human-focused leadership can catalyze operational excellence, motivate responsibility and create a culture of lifelong learning and inclusion in companies.

How do you design operational routines that empower women leaders to consistently deliver high-quality results in consumer lending teams?

Effective operational routines require a thoughtful blend of structure and flexibility. As a woman leader, my focus is on cultivating routines that encourage critical thinking, adaptability, and empowered leadership within the team. This involves establishing consistent practices such as daily team check-ins, transparent performance dashboards, and client-centered key performance indicators to promote alignment and accountability.

It is equally important to build in the capacity for quick adaptation when strategies prove ineffective or when market conditions change.

Finally, I believe in providing opportunities for leaders to challenge and refine these routines, ensuring they continue to meet the evolving needs of both the team and our customers. True empowerment comes from coaching and mentorship, allowing women the space and support to grow confidently and take on greater leadership roles.

What unique approaches can women leaders use to inspire ownership and accountability in credit and collections teams?

Personally, an effective way to inspire ownership and accountability in credit and collections teams starts with leading by example. Demonstrating personal responsibility—such as maintaining strong credit standing—sets a tangible standard for the team and reinforces the core values of the credit and collections function.

Beyond role modeling, it’s essential to contextualize each team member’s contributions within the broader business landscape. Rather than siloing discussions, connecting daily tasks to the company’s overall objectives encourages strategic thinking and shows the team the real impact

of their work on the business’s success.

This holistic approach not only drives engaging conversations but also fosters a sense of ownership, as team members see the direct link between their actions and the company’s bottom line.

Celebrating achievements is equally important. Recognizing individual and team successes goes beyond offering incentives—it holds members accountable for meeting their KPIs and supports their professional growth. By providing credit where it’s due and offering opportunities for development, leaders can help team members progress into greater roles within the organization.

Finally, encouraging open communication and collaborative problem-solving ensures that every perspective is valued and integrated into evolving team strategies. By cultivating shared purpose and highlighting the critical role of each individual, leaders transform routine processes into a source of organizational resilience and adaptability. This intentional inclusiveness not only strengthens technical expertise but also nurtures personal investment, laying the foundation for a culture of excellence, growth, and sustained success.

How can women leaders leverage data and process improvement tools to unlock creativity and innovation within structured finance operations?

Women leaders can unlock creativity and innovation in structured finance operations by strategically blending data-driven insights with process improvement tools. While these tools may seem rigid at first glance, they actually create the freedom to innovate by reducing uncertainty and operational friction.

By implementing simple dashboards, streamlined workflows, and process mapping, leaders establish a reliable foundation. This structure minimizes errors and inefficiencies, allowing teams to shift their focus from troubleshooting to ideation.

What sets women leaders apart is their ability to combine intuition with analytical rigor. When paired with design-thinking approaches, data and process tools become catalysts for reimagining core elements especially of a business like ours which involves consumer financing.

These valuable skills can create innovative products and services that will benefit our customers. These innovations remain grounded in measurable outcomes, ensuring that creativity aligns with business impact.

Ultimately, when systems are optimized and transparent, leaders can foster a culture where experimentation is safe, insights are actionable, and innovation thrives.

In what ways can women leaders create feedback loops that drive continuous operational improvement across large consumer lending organizations?

Women leaders can foster powerful feedback loops that drive continuous operational improvement in large consumer lending organizations by the following:

Establishing Psychological Safety:

Women leaders often excel at creating environments where team members feel safe to speak up. In consumer lending, where mistakes can be costly, this psychological safety is essential. By encouraging open dialogue, they transform frontline insights, customer complaints, and operational bottlenecks into valuable data points rather than sources of blame.

Designing 2-way Feedback Channels:

Effective feedback loops flow both ways, from frontline staff to leadership and back. Women leaders can institutionalize this by setting up regular listening sessions, anonymous feedback tools, and cross-functional retrospectives that ensure insights are captured and acted upon.

Leveraging Smart Tools for Real-Time Insights:

Tools like live dashboards, customer sentiment analysis, and automated survey platforms help convert feedback into actionable intelligence. These systems ensure that feedback is timely, relevant, and grounded in operational realities, not just anecdotal.

Closing the Loop with Transparency:

The most critical and often overlooked step is showing what changed as a result of the feedback. Women leaders can build trust and engagement by visibly linking employee and customer input to specific improvements in processes, policies, or service delivery. This reinforces a culture of continuous learning and accountability.

Modeling Inclusive Leadership:

By consistently demonstrating that every voice matters, women leaders cultivate a feedback- rich culture where innovation thrives. This inclusivity not only improves operations but also boosts morale and retention across diverse teams.

How do you balance the use of technology and human judgment to elevate operational excellence in consumer lending processes?

Balancing technology and human judgment is essential to achieving operational excellence in consumer lending. Technology delivers speed, scale, and consistency, especially in areas like risk scoring and document processing. But human judgment brings empathy, context, and trust; qualities that algorithms alone can't replicate.

For example, in SF Finance, our scoring model might flag a borrower as high-risk due to missed payments, but a human can recognize the story behind the data, perhaps a temporary setback caused by a medical emergency, with a strong history of repayment otherwise. This is a tough balancing act. Hence, we incorporated processes that can detect and measure cases like this so we can still service our clients while minimizing risk.

Women leaders often excel at this balance, leveraging technology to handle volume and efficiency, while stepping in where nuance and emotional intelligence matter.

By establishing clear escalation protocols and empowering teams with both digital tools and decision-making autonomy, we create a system where speed and empathy coexist.

This synergy doesn’t just improve performance, it builds deeper customer trust and loyalty, which is the true measure of excellence in consumer lending.

What key mindset shifts should women leaders embrace to lead operational excellence and scale their influence effectively?

To lead with impact and scale influence, women leaders can embrace three transformative mindset shifts:

From Perfection to Progress

Excellence isn’t about flawless execution; it’s about continuous improvement. Shifting the focus from chasing perfection to driving progress encourages agility, innovation, and resilience. Operational excellence thrives in environments where learning is constant and iteration is welcomed.

From Self-Reliance to Strategic Empowerment

Scaling operations requires more than personal effort, it demands systems, delegation, and trust. Women leaders are uniquely positioned to build inclusive, high-performing teams by empowering others to lead, make decisions, and take ownership. This shift transforms leadership from individual contribution to collective capability.

From Compliance to Customer-Centricity

While compliance ensures stability, true excellence is measured by the value delivered to customers. Adopting a customer outcome mindset means designing processes that not only meet standards but also drive meaningful borrower success. This shift aligns operational goals with real-world impact.

By embracing these shifts, women leaders don’t just optimize operations, they redefine what inclusive, purpose-driven leadership looks like in the financial sector and beyond.