Female Invest, Europe’s largest financial education platform for women, has closed a funding round of £3.3mln.
Investors included Y Combinator and Dr. Fiona Pathiraja.
READ: Gender pensions gap gets wider as women are less informed than men, research shows
The start-up, founded in 2019 by Emma Due Bitz, Camilla Falkenberg and Anna-Sophie Hartvigsen, aims to close the gender investment gap by providing a space where women can learn more about investing and personal finance.
Paying members can access 27 video courses, 18 masterclasses, a written knowledge bank, weekly webinars with expert speakers and a community page where members can connect with each other.
Around 70% of stocks are owned by male investors, with one in five British women admitting to having never held stocks, while female workers retire with around £70,000 less in their pensions than men.
However, according to analysis by Warwick Business School, women who do take the plunge outperform men when it comes to investment returns.
“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,” said Hartvigsen.
The three founders were named in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for 2020 and won the world’s largest start-up competition, Cartier Women’s Initiative, in the same year.