While many of us may think of the world of banking as staid and stuffy, Capital One is staying on the cutting edge of not only financial technology, but it’s also making investments in its technologists — especially women. The company is also doing its part to keep more women from dropping out of the tech field. It is focusing on the inclusion and empowerment of women in tech.

Julie Elberfeld, SVP, Commercial Bank CIO at Capital One, joined Rebecca Knight (@knightrm), co-host of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in Houston, TX. They discussed the role of AI and machine learning in banking, as well as issues around retaining and nurturing women in the workforce.

Bringing AI into banking

Early this year, Capital One became the first company to offer its customers a way to interact with their financial accounts through the Amazon Echo smart speaker system. Amazon Echo deploys a voice-command service called Alexa (similar to Apple’s Siri) to help users perform such tasks as turning on smart lights, playing music or purchasing items from Amazon. Elberfeld announced a new product at the Grace Hopper conference, a new extension for Alexa, called How Much Did I Spend?

Knight touched on how AI is bringing so many new features to the banking world and asked Elberfeld where she thought companies were on that continuum.

“This whole data revolution around machine learning and AI, we’re just at the tip of the iceberg in terms of the opportunity that it creates. In banking, we have all kinds of ideas on how we can simplify people’s lives and give them the information they need through all of these technologies,” said Elberfeld.

The ‘problem that has no name’

Two years ago, Capital One started its Women in Technology initiative, and it’s one of the big reasons they participate in Grace Hopper.

Knight and Elberfeld discussed the problem of how women in the technological field are known to drop out of their careers at the midpoint, just when they’re on the verge of being the leaders of tomorrow. Knight asked if it was primarily to raise their children.

“The research shows that it’s not so much that women drop out to have children, it’s mainly because women don’t feel included. You hear things like, ‘death by a thousand cuts’; it’s things they can’t even identify themselves that really cause them to feel like this wasn’t the right field for them. But something just doesn’t feel right,” said Elberfeld.

Knight remarked, “It’s that problem that has no name.”

Elberfeld brought up Capital One’s management training to recognize and help mitigate biases — mostly unrecognized — that can get in the way of hiring and retaining the best people for the job, no matter if they’re male or female.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the Anita Borg Institute’s Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.

Photo by SiliconANGLE