Investment app tailored to women launches

The team behind Australia’s first female-tailored superannuation fund, Verve Super, have launched a new ethical investment app, Verve Money, that addresses and considers the needs of female investors.

The app release follows the latest Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) Investor Survey which showed Australian women account for only 42 per cent of people investing outside super and a primary residence such as an owner-occupier property, compared to 58 per cent of men.

Females also have more modest portfolios of $413,000 on average compared to males’ $667,000, while also account for 31 per cent of people with balances of under $50,000.

Despite these figures, the survey also found an increasing number of new investors in 2022 were female. Verve said its new app uses a “behavioural psychology approach to accommodate women’s specific financial goals by providing three ethically curated portfolios with different time frames, risk levels and anticipated returns.

“It’s understandable that women don’t invest at the same rate as men. Historically women haven’t been invited into conversations about investing,” Verve Money Co-Founder and CEO, Christina Hobbs, said.

“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.

“Launching an investment app is a logical next step for us. Virtually every day women ask us when they can invest with Verve outside of super, so we know that the demand is there.

“We are passionate about building an investment platform that allows us to truly partner with women along their wealth building journey.”

Every investment option available on Verve Money is ethically screened and has other impact focused alternative investments on offer, including a minimum of 20 per cent of each portfolio invested in climate solutions. This aims to increase the diversification across investments and thus decrease the risk for female investors, where other Australian micro investing apps usually invest 100 per cent in shares including exchange traded funds (ETFs.

Verve also surveyed over 500 women in the lead up to the app’s release to support its development and design, contributing to its female-specific goals, lower risk tolerance and ethical investment tilt.

“During product research, women investors consistently told us that they didn’t want to choose the one ‘ethically invested’ option offered in other apps; they wanted their money invested through a company whose values were aligned and that they could trust,” Hobbs said.

“They wanted to be able to select from a range of ethically invested options, and they wanted to know that their money truly can be used to drive a positive future.

“We believe that in building a product and service for an underserved community, we’ve actually built a great product for everyone. We’ve created an app that offers three ethically invested options, that supports people to invest in line with their goals, and that is super simple to use – 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.”