New Aussie founded investing app tackles the financial barriers that see a 38% gap between the number of men and women investing
The powerhouse team behind Verve Super – Australia’s first Super Fund tailored for women, and founded by women today announced the launch of Verve Money, a goals focused ethical investment app that is tailor designed around the needs and desires of women investors.
The latest ASX Investor survey shows that Australian women are lagging behind when it comes to investing to build long term wealth. It reports that men make up 58% of people in Australia investing outside of superannuation and a primary place of residence (i.e. a owner-occupier property), compared to women, who make up 42%. Male investors also continue to have larger portfolios on average – $667,000 compared to $413,000 for women – while 31% of female investors have balances under $50,000 compared to 21% of male investors.
Verve also hopes to jump onto the growing trend of new investors increasingly being women – with parity in the gender of new investors in 2022.
“It’s understandable that women don’t invest at the same rate as men. Historically women haven’t been invited into conversations about investing, it hasn’t felt like a space for us, and when you look at the products in market, they don’t meet the needs of many women looking to invest for the first time.” Verve Money Co-Founder and CEO, Christina Hobbs said.
“Launching an investment app is a logical next step for us. Virtually every day women were asking us when they could invest with Verve outside of super, so we knew there was huge demand. We were passionate about building a thoughtful investing platform that solved the problems of underserved women investors and allowed us to truly partner with women along their wealth building journey.” Hobbs continued.
Research conducted by Verve to support the design of the app including surveying and interviewing over 500 women showed that women looking to invest often had different motivators for building wealth compared to men, as well as having lower risk tolerances, and overwhelmingly want their money invested ethically.
At the heart of Verve Money is a behavioural psychology approach that centres investing around an individual’s financial goals. Verve Money also ensures that every investment option available is ethically screened, and includes impact focused alternative investments that everyday investors wouldn’t normally be able to access. Verve targets a minimum 20% of each portfolio to be invested in climate solutions. Not only is this inspiring for many new investors, but the inclusion of non listed investments also increases diversification which is commonly associated with decreased risk – an important feature for women investors.
“Women investors overwhelmingly told us that they didn’t want to choose the one ‘ethically labelled’ option from other apps, rather they wanted their money invested with people whose values they could fully trust knowing that every investment offered is ethical, that they had choice from a range of ethical options to select that one that suits them best, and they wanted to know that their money truly can be used to drive a positive future.” Hobbs continued
The initial results of the app are promising, Almost ninety percent of Verve Money members who have been trialling and testing the app are women with just over 10% of investors identifying as men or non-binary.
“We’ve really proved the saying that if you build a great product and service for an underserved community, then you often just build a great product for everyone. We’ve created an app that ensures every portfolio is ethically screened, that supports people to invest inline with their goals, and that is super simple to use but sophisticated behind the scenes – and that seems to appeal to underserved women investors but also a broader community including men and non binary investors who are looking for this service and couldn’t find it in market”.
How Verve Money Works:
The Verve Money App is centred around financial goals, encouraging investors to set meaningful financial goals and then select inspiring goal imagery. Investors are then able to select from one of three ethically curated portfolios that are designed with different goal time frames in mind, ranging in risk level and anticipated returns.
One of the key features of Verve Money’s investments is that every portfolio is not only ethically screened, but also includes impact focused alternative investments that everyday investors wouldn’t normally be able to access. This includes a minimum 20% investment of each portfolio in climate solutions. This is a strong differentiation to other micro investing apps in Australia which typically have 100% of investments in shares including ETFs.
Verve Money offers an automated investing option, in which investors can choose an amount they want to invest at a regular interval (i.e. monthly), split that amount across their goals, and track progress in real-time using the Verve Money app.
Verve Money is free to download and does not charge account fees for balances under $1,000 to prevent small balances from being eroded by fees as they may be in other investing apps – meaning wealth building is accessible for all whether customers have $1 or many more.
The app is available in the Google Play and Apple stores, or can be downloaded at https://vervemoney.com.au/the-app/