**Motivation**
Though the fintech industry is booming, most women choose to sit on the investment sideline. About 13% of women hold an ISA shares account, and only 7% of women hold other investments (excluding housing investments) \[YouGov, 2018\]. This is about 50% less than men who invest in the U.K., resulting in a £1.65 trillion gender gap \[Investcentre, 2021\]. This gender gap is even larger in ethnic groups. Women of colour are almost twice as likely to have no investment or savings for retirement, compared to white women.
As a business, our motivation is to empower the underserved, often neglected, female community to take control of their financial affairs and actively engage in saving & investment for their and their families future.
**Vision / Solution**
Taking financial control is a complex journey requiring (Appendix 3):
1. Trigger (an event to stimulate financial action such as a conversation with a friend)
2. Education (learning about this new world)
3. Empowerment (boosting confidence in finance)
4. Comparison (comparing all the options available)
5. Choice (choosing most appropriate)
6. Taking action (the final stage to financial control)
As a business, we provide an end-to-end solution that helps users from education to taking action. The focus of this grant is to produce low-cost and high-impact digital service that helps women take-action. Too often is this stage overlooked by the financial industry yet our 500 female members of our financial community describe this step as the most difficult and frustrating. Complex terminology, fear, doubt, multiple stages to navigate, poor UX design, and many more issues, halt progress. Often to the point where women fail to execute a financial decision. We have managed to overcome these through in-the-room hand holding workshops that we believe we can translate into a digital offering to help more women nationwide.
**Key Objectives**
* To create the first low-cost "action taking" digital service that target people who can't afford financial planning
* 1000 women taking financial action (combination of all techniques digitally) including 50% BAME
* Create an active female community of 3000 members and beyond conversing about finance
* Creating a new job role as a "financial action specialist" that compliments financial advisors
* First significant dataset on methods to help women overcome fear of action
* Ultimately help to narrow the financial gender gap