At just 27, Sophie Njagi is the CEO of EQWIRE, a UK-regulated Electronic Money Institution authorised by the FCA, making her one of the youngest female leaders in the UK’s fintech sector.
Having built an international career spanning payments, banking and financial technology, Sophie has earned a reputation for combining strategic leadership with a passion for innovation.
Originally from Kenya, Sophie’s journey has involved building her career across multiple countries, adapting to new cultures and establishing herself in a highly competitive industry. More recently, she has balanced executive leadership with motherhood, giving her a refreshing perspective on resilience, ambition and what success really means.
If you’re waiting to feel completely ready before putting yourself forward, you could be waiting a long time.
Most people who step into a bigger role still have questions and they may just have more practice at hiding them.
Being the youngest person in the room can make that even harder by bringing pressure to sound certain, avoid asking the ‘obvious’ question and prove that you deserve to be there. Yet the question that feels too basic to ask may be the one that exposes a problem nobody else has noticed.
At 27, as an Executive Director at Eqwire that has become one of the most important lessons of my career as looking experienced matters far less than being willing to learn, take responsibility and be useful.
For me, there was never a neat plan to work in fintech as growing up in Kenya many of the roles I have since held were jobs I didn’t even know existed. What was there was an interest in business, in how money moves and in the way technology can solve ordinary problems.
Following that curiosity led to bigger questions like, how does a business receive money across borders? What happens behind the screen after someone presses ‘send’? How do you build something quickly without treating regulation as an afterthought?
Fintech can look very polished from the outside as people see the app, the card or the announcement about a new market. Behind all of that is banking partners, payment rails, compliance rules, safeguarding, client onboarding, technology integrations and operations teams holding everything together.
When a payment works nobody thinks about what it has taken to get it over the line, but when it doesn’t, everybody does and it is in that hidden side of technology where I found my place.
The industry is still male dominated particularly at senior levels and it would have been easy to treat that as a contest or spend too much energy trying to show that I belonged. What helped far more was concentrating on the work. Asking questions. Taking on the messy projects that others didn’t want. Staying with a problem long enough to understand it properly.
It didn’t feel brave in fact, often it was uncomfortable and there were responsibilities that arrived before the confidence to carry them. Confidence is often described as something you need before you say yes but in reality, it usually comes afterwards, once you have done the work, got something wrong, put it right and realised you can cope with more than you thought.
My role at Eqwire brings together banking relationships, regulation, technology and day-to-day operations. In one morning, the conversation can move from a system integration to safeguarding, a client issue or a new payment route. No textbook can prepare anyone for every decision. What matters is knowing when to ask for help, finding the right people and being accountable for what happens next.
If something is unfamiliar, I would rather say so and understand it rather than pretend and curiosity has opened more doors for me than certainty ever could. For women thinking about technology, this industry needs far more than one type of person. You don’t need to have coded since childhood or have a computer science degree or a perfectly planned career and you certainly don’t need to wait until you match every line of a job description.
Technology needs lawyers who understand systems, operations people who can spot where a process will break, communicators who can make complexity clear and compliance professionals who know how to build trust rather than simply say no. A different background is not something to explain away as it may be the reason you see what others miss.
Leadership doesn’t always look loud either, it can be thoughtful or decisive and it definitely can ask for help and still own the outcome. Sometimes it looks like being the youngest person in the discussion and having the courage to ask the question that changes its direction.
The real attraction of fintech for me is not a title or the speed of the industry, but it’s what the infrastructure makes possible for people. Better payment systems can help a small company enter a new market, make cross-border trade less painful or give someone access to services that once felt out of reach. The work behind the screen has very human consequences.
So, when an opportunity feels slightly too early try not to ask whether you already look like the person who should have it. Ask whether you are ready to learn, do the work and keep going when it becomes difficult. You may grow into the opportunity after you take it, that isn’t a weakness or a sign that you slipped through the door too soon, it is how careers are built. You don’t have to know everything before you begin. You just need to be willing to begin.
