There are people in the City you respect. And then there’s Louise Smith, someone you quietly wish could be cloned, turned into software, and installed in every boardroom. I half-joke that if there were a “Lou AI,” I’d subscribe instantly. From chairing Stripe UK and Innovate Finance to leading digital transformation at WTW’s Neuron Digital Trading, Louise isn’t just part of the UK fintech scene she’s its architecture. A builder and a doer, not a talker. And behind the credentials is something rarer: humanity, humour, and a fearless kind of warmth that cuts through the stale, male, pale status quo.
“Louise Smith’s professional rise isn’t built on buzzwords. It’s built on impact.”
VISIT INNOVATE FINANCE
As the UK’s first Chief Digital Officer at Lloyd’s of London, she laid down the foundations for Future at Lloyd’s, transforming a centuries‑old insurance marketplace into a digitally fluent ecosystem. Then came Neuron—WTW’s bold step into real‑time, data‑led, digital insurance. Under Louise’s leadership, it quietly redefined how brokers and insurers transact across borders and categories. At Stripe, she now chairs the UK board and sits on the Risk Committee for Stripe Technology Europe, blending commercial oversight with a relentless user‑first ethos. And as Chair of Innovate Finance since July 2021, she’s been instrumental in shaping regulatory debate, expanding international fintech ties, and lifting the sector’s voice on everything from open finance to DEI.
She guides boards and strategies with precision, insists on representation from all corners of the sector, and ensures that tech and financial health serve real people, not just algorithms.
Louise doesn’t shout. She doesn’t need to. She leads by turning up as exactly who she is. In a City that spent decades trying to closet, conform, and contain people like us—that’s radical.
She pushed me to take one of the boldest career leaps of my life. Better than any mentor, she’s a silent gladiator in tailored suits and killer style, who watches and waits and then drops a sentence that lands like a lightning bolt.
Like me, she knows how to laugh under pressure. At the Innovate Finance Global Summit, I had just snapped at a self-important FX CEO, using humour to defuse the bigotry layered onto me for being Brown, gay, dyslexic and dyspraxic. She came over and said, “I don’t know how you didn’t go further.” I replied, “If I was a straight man I’d be ‘assertive.’ But as a gay man I’m branded ‘dramatic,’ so humour is my shield.” She gave me that Lou smile—and later, one of the few hugs that make me feel seen in a way even my dad used to.
Dave aka Jenny…
“It took me until I was about 25 26 to identify as gay at work and probably with my family as well and that was probably because of fear and fear I think is quite debilitating particularly in your social sense as well as your work sense because you’re pretending to be somebody Who You’re Not So I had a pretend boyfriend called Dave he was actually a six foot two South African girl Jenny at that point in time”
It was my pleasure to produce and direct this series with the very talent Adam Bloodworth who created one of the most iconic funny moments I have had with Lou.
Louise didn’t just witness the City’s closet culture—she lived it. Her now-famous Dave-and-Jenny story—fabricated boyfriend Dave who never existed (it was Jenny) was her own way of controlling the narrative. When she finally came out, her team said: “Thank God. We knew all along.” That moment was as much a career milestone as any digital transformation program she’s ever run.
More than being a fintech leader, she’s a convenor: someone who builds spaces (physical and emotional) where difference isn’t just tolerated—it’s the source of power. She walks through walls without asking permission. And she brings others with her.
The Fintech Changemakers..
And then there’s Janine Hirt—CEO of Innovate Finance and the other half of a truly transformative duo. Together, they’ve elevated the organisation from polite trade body to a global voice shaping budgets, policy, international partnerships, and campaigns for inclusion and startup growth. Janine regularly calls Louise her “inspiration” a compliment she doesn’t knock back lightly .
Louise may be understated, but she’s no shrinking violet. She disrupts through authenticity, builds through trust, and executes with empathy. In a world that still tries to label and limit difference, she insists on impossibility—and then builds the stairway.
No Dave required.
WHY FACE FUEL IS Thttps://thrivemagazine.ai/life-and-style/why-kiehls-facial-fuel-still-outsmarts-loreal-men-expert-hydra-energetic-heres-what-20-years-of-grooming-trust-looks-likeHE ESSENTIAL DAILY CREAM
This week we had our Men’s Grooming an Health Editor David try out all the hype on one of the Kiehl’s Best Seller so we blind tested it against an old favourite from my days at L’Oréal
