RBS gears up to launch women-only crowdfunding scheme in Scottish first
● Lender partners with Crowdfunder to encourage more women-led start-ups
Royal Bank of Scotland is to launch Scotland’s first women- only crowdfunding pro - gramme, as part of its efforts aims to encourage female entrepreneurship.
The initiative, entitled “Back Her Business”, has been developed in partnership with funding platform Crowdfunder.
It seeks to reduce the gender gap when it comes to start-ups by giving women across the UK the opportunity to test and validate their business ideas.
Back Her Business, launched yesterday in Aberdeen, will offer financial support as well as b esp oke training, coaching, networking opportunities and local events through the bank’s Entrepreneur Accelerator programme and its Women in Business proposition.
Although most of the funding will come from crowdsourced pledges, RBS will provide a top-up fund of £1 million per annum and offer up to 50 percent of an individual’ s fundraising target–capped at £5,000 – for certain projects.
It forms par t of the bank’s wider commitment to sup - port a further 400,000 women-led businesses across the UK by 2025.
The lender’s recently pub - lished Rose Review revealed that only 5.6 per cent of women run their own business and that women are half as likely as men to start a venture.
According to the rep or t, if women started businesses at the same rate as men it would add £250 billion to the UK economy, a figure equivalent to four years of natural GVA (gross value added) growth.
Speaking at the event launch at Aberdeen’ s Mar is ch al Square, Malcolm Buchanan, chair of Royal Bank of Scotland’s Scotland Board, said: “The Rose Review, and the bank’s Global Entrepreneurship Monitor and Enterprise Tracker all reveal a worrying trend amongst would-be female entrepreneurs.
“We were told that they felt there was a lack of appropriate finance, mentoring, role models, local support and tailored advice and with Back Her Business, we want to tackle this head on.
“I see women with drive, passion and courage to go it alone and start their own business. The time couldn’t be more apt for us to really mobilise this energy and make some meaningful changes.”
Crowdfunder chief execu - tive Rob Love added: “This is a brilliant opportunity for more women across the UK to turn their ideas into reality.
“Crowd funding has been proven to help women validate their ideas, build confidence and raise the funds they need to make their ideas happen: more than half of our crowdfunding community is female.”