National conversation around challenges and opportunities for female founders continues
Female Founder UK joined a lively discussion with Katie Murray, NatWest’s chief financial officer, alongside a group of inspirational businesswomen with fantastic founder stories, during a roundtable event at NatWest in London.
The event gave Max Freer, founder of Female Founder UK, along with other female entrepreneurs, the opportunity to openly discuss with the CFO the challenges and opportunities women face, from accessing funding through to effective marketing in the age of AI, visibility and the current economic climate.
Max, who is an expert in brand marketing and media, said she felt very privileged to join the discussion with NatWest’s CFO, and acknowledged NatWest is working hard on some great initiatives for female founders of all ages and stages.
“What I have particularly welcomed from Katie is the recognition that it’s not just help with opening a bank account or accessing finance that female founders need, although she is doing her best to support women with that,” Max said.
“Katie also recognised the need for a sense of community, belonging and companionship amongst female entrepreneurs and talked about access to expertise and opportunities.
“This chimes with what is coming through as part of the Female Founders United conversation we are having across the country, where women in business are telling us there is a need for more help with their visibility, validation and recognition.
“More partnership working between different organisations, from banks through to training companies, marketing organisations and communities of businesswomen like ours, could deliver that for women.”
Max added this could help to close a gender gap that currently sees the UK economy £310bn out of pocket, according to the Rose Review into female entrepreneurship, which was completed by former NatWest CEO Alison Rose in 2019.
Following the review, the government and industry set a target to increase the number of female entrepreneurs by 50% by 2030, aiming to support roughly 600,000 new female-led businesses.
NatWest has responded by looking closely at how it supports female founders with initiatives to support women in business that go beyond just setting up a bank account and access to loans and investments.
These include its successful accelerator programmes which run in many cities within welcoming co-working spaces which are open to all founders, regardless of whether they bank with NatWest.
During the roundtable discussion, Max was inspired by some of the founder stories women presented.
These included overcoming health challenges to launch new products and leaving the corporate world behind to enjoy a better work-life balance or develop better ways of delivering the services they were trained to provide, while still fulfilling their goals and ambitions.
She said: “Women are increasingly starting their own businesses for many reasons that are multi-faceted and complex and they are presented with a number of opportunities and challenges along the way.
“The government, local authorities, B2B businesses and banking and financial institutions currently have a unique opportunity to seize this moment of rising female foundership and embrace and support women of all ages and stages – from those operating below the VAT threshold to multimillion pound enterprises.
”Female Founder UK exists as a movement that supports every female founder – wherever they want their entrepreneurial journey to take them.”
In the same week as the roundtable event took place in London, NatWest also announced its ‘She Scales’, initiative, is to be expanded across the UK, after delivering 68 events with more than 1,800 attendees.
Those surveyed after these events expressed that they felt more confident or better equipped to build their business after attending the events.
Many of the women involved in the roundtable discussion were part of the Buy Women Built community, led by founder Sahar Hashemi OBE, who was also at the event.
Buy Women Built (BWB) is a consumer movement and retail revolution, which shines a light on brilliant brands built by women to show consumers who they are – and why buying from them matters.
Female Founder UK is currently holding a series of events across the UK to lend support to and gather insight from female founders, which will feed into a national report on the rise of female founders and the challenges they face.
Read more at our e-magazine: https://www.femalefounderuk.co.uk/e-magazine/ and sign up to updates from Female Founder UK at https://www.femalefounderuk.co.uk/