Propelle tries to shut £550bn gender investing hole

New venture: Ayesha Ofori

A former City banker has launched the UK’s first trading platform aimed at women, to try and close a £550 billion gender investment gap.

Ayesha Ofori was a high-flyer at Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs before she quit to set up Propelle amid frustration at the way women invest much less in shares and other financial assets than men.

This puts them at a financial disadvantage, with lower savings and pensions. 

Men based in the UK have more than £1 trillion invested compared to just £450 billion for women, according to figures from Boring Money, with a lack of confidence cited as a major factor.

After raising £1.2 million in pre-seed funding, Ofori has created Propelle, which launches today to combine education, events and access to investment funds. 

‘I got to a point where I started to feel frustrated, I was making incredibly wealthy men even richer and I lost my sense of purpose,’ Ofori said of her decision to leave her job at Goldman Sachs, where she managed £500 million of clients’ money in the wealth management team. 

‘The lack of female clients bothered me, I would say ‘where are the women’.’

People often think you need to be rich to invest, Ofori said, but ‘the whole beauty of investing is the compounding that happens over time’. The effect of compounding is that if you re-invest interest or dividends, you make a return on that on top of your initial investment.

Propelle will offer funds from investment giants Vanguard, BlackRock and HSBC.

There are plans to move into other assets such as property in the future. There is a 0.48 per cent annual fee, meaning clients would pay £48 on a £10,000 investment and a premium membership option, where customers pay for access to financial education and other benefits.

There are several firms offering financial education aimed at women, including Female Invest and Your Juno.