HSBC Innovation Banking Backs FemTick to End Financial Bias Against Women’s Health Firms

CensHERship has launched FemTick, a new accreditation for financial institutions that treat women’s health businesses fairly. With automated risk systems frequently flagging femtech firms as high-risk due to anatomical terminology, this initiative provides a standard for banks, insurers, and payment providers to support a sector that has historically faced significant infrastructure barriers and lost revenue.

What was announced

FemTick is a global initiative designed to identify and validate financial and commercial service providers that enable women’s health businesses to operate and scale without facing structural bias. The accreditation covers a broad range of sectors, including banking, payment processing, insurance, underwriting, and ecommerce risk services. It aims to solve a specific technical hurdle: automated risk models that incorrectly categorize medical and health terminology—such as “menstrual,” “vagina,” or “sexual health”—as high-risk or adult content.

The launch is supported by data from CensHERship’s 2026 Bias Burden report, which highlights the systemic nature of these obstacles. According to the research, 100% of surveyed women’s health companies have encountered barriers when attempting to access essential financial or commercial services. These infrastructure hurdles have tangible economic consequences; more than 60% of the businesses surveyed reported lost revenue, while others cited delayed product launches, operational disruptions, and increased legal or operational costs.

As founding partners, HSBC Innovation Banking and Tokio Marine Kiln are among the first institutions to adopt the standard. The initiative seeks to create a visible "common standard" for the industry, allowing founders in the fast-growing women’s health sector to identify partners that have adapted their internal systems to accommodate the specific needs of healthcare innovation.

"Women’s health is a fast-growing area of healthcare innovation with significant unmet need. We’re seeing high-quality innovation across the sector, but companies still face barriers to accessing capital, commercialising their products and scaling successfully. With one of the world’s strongest innovation ecosystems, the UK is well placed to drive progress in this space, and we’re proud to support the extraordinary innovators shaping its future,"

Emma Stephens, Head of Growth and Financing, HSBC Innovation Banking UK

The companies involved

HSBC Innovation Banking is a specialist financial institution dedicated to the global innovation economy, providing banking services and expertise to startups, scale-ups, and their investors. It maintains a significant presence in the UK venture ecosystem, frequently facilitating debt facilities and growth capital for high-growth firms across various technology sectors.

Tokio Marine is a major international insurance group, with Tokio Marine Kiln operating as a leading international underwriter within the Lloyd’s insurance market. The firm has a specific focus on complex risks, including life sciences and cyber-physical damage. Its involvement in FemTick follows other ecosystem-led initiatives, such as its recent efforts to scale green transition insurance through multi-partner collaborations.

CensHERship is a global organization focused on addressing the structural and systemic biases that affect the growth of women’s health companies. By launching the FemTick accreditation, the group aims to bridge the gap between healthcare innovation and the financial infrastructure required to support it. The initiative is also supported by The Case for Her, an investment organization co-founded by Cristina Ljungberg that focuses on women's health and wellness.

What FF News has reported before

FF News has extensively tracked the activities of the founding partners in the innovation and insurance sectors. We recently reported that UK Venture Capital Hits Record $6.9bn in Q3 2026 as HSBC Innovation Banking Reports Surge, highlighting the bank's central role in the UK’s fundraising landscape. Additionally, we covered how LAKA Secures £6.5 Million Debt Facility From HSBC Innovation Banking to Accelerate European Expansion and M&A Strategy, demonstrating the bank's appetite for niche insurance and mobility sectors.

On the insurance side, our coverage of Tokio Marine GX Launches Nine-Partner Ecosystem to Scale Green Transition Insurance showed the group’s commitment to building collaborative frameworks for emerging risks. We also noted the firm's technical expansion in our report on how Tokio Marine Kiln Launches Enhanced Cyber-Physical Damage Insurance for Asset-Intensive Firms.

What this means

This move highlights a growing friction point between automated compliance and specialized market growth. For years, fintech has championed "straight-through processing" and algorithmic risk assessment, yet this announcement exposes how those very systems can become a bottleneck when they lack the nuance to distinguish medical innovation from restricted content. By formalizing an accreditation, CensHERship is forcing a conversation about the "bias of the algorithm." The industry now faces a choice: continue relying on broad-brush risk filters that alienate high-growth sectors like femtech, or invest in the more granular, sector-specific underwriting and KYC logic that HSBC and Tokio Marine are now signaling as the new standard.