Jana Němečková is unique on the Czech financial market. With her appointment as chairwoman of the board of leading factoring company Transfinance a few weeks ago, she became one of only a handful of women serving in top managerial positions in the financial sector in this country. Němečková talks to The Prague Post about operating in a male-dominated field, and discusses challenges that local financial institutions that focus on purchasing debt or invoices from other companies face on both domestic and international markets.

A few weeks ago, you became one of the rare women to head a company operating in the financial sector. Do you feel like a black sheep out there?

Honestly, I didn't think about my position like this until you asked. I do not find it strange. And as to whether I feel like a black sheep — not at all. I'd rather see myself as a white sheep among black ones.

Why are there so few women in top managerial spots in the financial sector?

I think there are so few women because they don't want to be there. That was the case with me. I was No. 2 in the company [vice chairwoman of the board], and I did not mind. It was much more important for me that I had enough room for my own creativity. Anyway, this situation also results from the traditional division of labor between men and women. Men are those who're still hunting something, and women are tending the fire.

There is still an apparent gap between men and women in terms of average salaries. What would you recommend women do in order to eliminate such differences?

You must be some secret feminist! I do not think that there are any differences in remuneration of top managers in companies resulting from whether they are men or women. At least, I don't see it.

You took over the management of Transfinance at a time when the company's overall revenues were increasing, but the pace of the growth of the factoring market is slowing down. Do you believe the pace of growth can further accelerate, or is it necessary to accept a decrease?

There is volatility in the growth of the factoring market here, but the growth never fell below 12 percent during the past eight years. This is not a bad result. The volume of revenues this year looks quite promising, too. In other words, I'm not worried about the future of factoring in these conditions.

Do regular commercial banks compete with factoring companies?

Banks represent the same competition as other factoring companies. Some banks do offer really good conditions of financing customers' claims, but I think this is only a temporary situation. Given the fact that some banks have little experience with financing small and midsize enterprises this way, I have good reason to suspect that they did not calculate all the risks into their prices.

Are you afraid more companies will prefer complex services offered by banks? What can specialized financial companies, including factoring companies, do in order to fight off banks?

There will certainly be companies that will not want to be dependent on only one financial group, and they will try to diversify risks among more financial partners. Compared with banks, we're certainly faster in terms of decision-making, and we strive to offer personal treatment to our customers.

Home factoring represents a major part of your revenues, about 80 percent, while the share of export- and import-related factoring is rather low. Why is that?

In developed economies, this share is commonly standing at 9-to-1. Needless to say, there are differences according to the dependence on exports and overall structure of trading.

Do you sufficiently market your services abroad, especially in countries that are the Czech Republic's main trading partners?

We enable our exporters to offer loans to their subscribers, so we increase the competitiveness of small and midsize Czech companies on foreign markets.

We even export our services to foreign partners. We especially cooperate with Asian and Turkish factoring companies.

Can a Czech factoring company succeed on the global market?

Sure. We're facing competitors from places such as Germany, the United Kingdom and Taiwan, among others, all of which have bigger economies than the Czech Republic. So, no one can say that we're invisible in the world.

Let me ask a more personal question. What do you consider to be your own biggest debt?