The latest Invest in Women Code report has been released this week. Collated by the UK Business Angels Association, the Department for Business and Trade, the BVCA, the British Business Bank, Responsible Finance and UK Finance, it has been tracking data points around investing in women for the last five years.
It’s good to see that some positive progress is being made with a marked difference in outcomes coming from the signatories versus the wider market.
Signatory VC firms reported that 32% of all deals were in teams with at least one female founder. This rose to 42% in the VC firms who had signed up in the last year.
In the angel market, there are also some positive results.
- Two thirds of total deal flow received by the Angel group signatories included female founders, either mixed gender or all-women teams.
- 25% of the total number of pitch decks received by angel signatories were from all female founded businesses
- The average funding (£) requested by all female teams was 40% higher than in 2022.
- For the first time since these reports were produced, teams with women founders (both all-female teams and mixed-gender teams) received the larger share of investment deals (57%) and over half (51.5%) of the amount of equity invested by the angels, compared to all-male teams with 48.5%.
- In contrast, all-female teams accessed only 9.75% of the total amount of risk capital invested by the angel group signatories in 2023. This represents a small increase from the 7.1% of total investment that went to all female teams in 2022. Mixed gender teams accessed 41.8% of the total amount of angel investments made in 2023 representing a significant increase from the amount recorded in 2022.
- 60% of the Angel groups that provided investment data in 2023 have over 15% women investors, with three groups having over 50% women investors and three with 100% female investor members – this demonstrates a higher proportion of groups with an improving gender balance, compared to the 2022 investor cohort.
- Angel groups with more than 15% women investors made 57% of their investments in teams with women founders (all-female and mixed-gender).
- There is an increasing number of female angel investors in the UK, with three angel signatories consisting entirely of women angel investors, triple the number of last year’s cohort. Lifted Ventures is one of these.
- All-male teams received 48.5% of the total amount invested, a massive shift from the 73.5% of total investment in all-male teams in 2022.
As one of the signatories to the Invest in Women Code, we’re proud to be helping move the dial on investing in women, by women.
We applaud the progress, however to accelerate this, more needs to happen:
- 40% of all angel groups and 47% of VCs have now signed up to the Invest in Women Code – let’s aim for 50%+ in the next year, making the signatories the majority.
- Let’s encourage VC to increase the number of women on Investment committees, the report shows a small decline in this number to 21%.
- Let’s work with the new Government to consider how the new Sovereign Wealth Fund can be used as a tool to change the quantum of revenue invested.
- Let’s work together to lobby for incentives for pensions funds to support female led early stage businesses.
Together we can make a difference.
You can read the report here and explore the data yourself.