Female Invest closes GBP3.3m funding round

Female Invest, an EdTech platform and community which empowers women by increasing their understanding of personal finance and investing, has closed a GBP3.3 million funding round from a syndicate of prominent investors including Y Combinator and Dr Fiona Pathiraja.

Female Invest was founded in 2019 by Emma Due Bitz (26), Camilla Falkenberg (28), and Anna-Sophie Hartvigsen (27), and inspired by their own experiences of attending personal finance educational events at which women were largely absent, and their subsequent discovery of the unaddressed gender disparity in investments and savings.

All three co-founders were named in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for 2020, and in the same year, the company was the winner of the world’s largest start up competition, Cartier Women’s Initiative, and the prize of 100,000 USD.

At a time when 70 per cent of stocks are owned by male investors (one in five British women admitting to having never held stocks), and female workers retiring with around GBP70,000 less in their pensions than men (Nest survey – Oct 2020), Female Invest aims to close the gender investment gap by providing a space in which women can acquire the skills necessary to control their own capital and obtain financial independence. What’s more, according to analysis by Warwick Business School, women who do take the plunge outperform men when it comes to investment returns, making the need for a company run by women, for women, that approaches finance in a fun and authentic way, all the more pertinent.

Female Invest co-founder, Anna-Sophie Hartvigsen, explains the rationale underpinning the platform: “Women are falling financially behind in every single country in the world. They are earning less, saving less and then – with what money they have – they are investing less. Our job at Female Invest is to close that gap as quickly and helpfully as possible.”

Co-founder, Camilla Falkenberg, outlines the need to reinvent the paradigm of how young women experience financial advice: “When it comes to money-saving insights, the internet is filled with sites which advise young women on how to save money on beauty, clothes, food and going out. Yet, when it comes to making money, there is almost nothing on helping women make their money grow through investments. Female Invest fills this gap”.

Yet Female Invest intends to achieve more than just financial education. Co-founder Emma Due Bitz, who worked as a certified stockbroker from the age of 20, explains that a byproduct of the platform should be to contribute to the demystification of the world of investments: “The financial industry has traditionally been dominated by men. This is reflected in every aspect of it: from communication style to the corporate culture and product offerings. While this is not done with the intention to exclude women, it effectively does just that.”

Female Invest is a subscription based learning platform. When signing up, members get access to extensive learning courses with everything they need to make the most of their money. The platform currently has 27 video courses, 18 master classes, a written knowledge bank, weekly webinars with expert speakers and a community page where members can connect with each other.