Every year around IWD you will see a lot of brands and companies talking about the challenges women face in their given industry or maybe even just post an inspirational quote with a feminist hashtag attached and leave it at that.

No-one needs another inspirational quote aimed at empowering women. It's not helping anyone and quite frankly it's a little reductive. As brands we need to take action and actually support women. We need to take a look at ourselves and see where we could be doing better and start working towards creating that needed change.

Last year we launched our investment product. Now a few months down the line we are seeing a pattern emerge. Currently 60% of Plumsters are women but only 40% of investors with Plum are women. Financial inequality is one of the most significant and far reaching challenges women face today, so figures like these are not something we take lightly.

Why should you care?

To put it into perspective the gender pay gap in the UK 2018 was 8.6% (ONS, 2018). The investments gender gap was 52% the same year. That equates to £15bn more invested by men than women in 2018 alone (Kantar TNS, 2018).

'Today, the majority of women don’t invest in the stock market. Instead of putting more into a pension or utilising the tax-efficiency of stocks and shares ISAs, women favour the perceived caution of cash. But this caution comes at a cost: by leaving their hard-earned money languishing in cash, their savings fall prey to inflation and lose value in real terms.' - Maike Currie, Investment Director, Fidelity International

This is especially important when you consider that the pay gap and the fact that women are more likely to have time out of working to have children has a direct impact on our pensions and our ability to provide for our futures. In fact this results in men aged 55-64 having pension pots worth over double that of the average woman’s living in the UK (ONS, 2018).

What can we do?

A lack of time, confidence (not ability), knowing where to start, poor communication and industry jargon are some of the common reasons flagged by multiple studies as to barriers stopping women investing. Here at Plum we are on a mission to tackle all of these.

There have been a number of big campaigns aimed around solving this problem. But before we can look to try and solve this issue in wider society, we are looking to make sure we are doing everything we can to remedy the problem in our own back yard.

That's why this month we will be rolling out a whole host of content, in a range of different formats, hoping to give women the information and confidence they need in a simple and easy to understand way. We will be speaking with everyone from financial advisors to women investing for the first time with Plum. Additionally, to put our money where our mouth is, from March 8th 2019 to April 6th 2019 for each post using the #investwithplum we will waive our monthly fee for investments for 1 WHOLE YEAR for a Plum user. Please note fund and provider fees will still apply, for more information on fees take a look here.

When it comes to Plum itself, we are reviewing the way Plum is built in terms of the investment feature and ensuring our user testing groups are diverse to make sure it is accessible and convenient for everyone. No matter how much time, money, or knowledge you have.  

Of course, investing won't be right for everyone and capital invested is at risk.

Terms and conditions:

For each post shared to social media which uses the #investwithplum, Plum will waive the £1 monthly fee for investing for a Plum user. If the person posting with the #investwithplum is a Plum user they can send in a screenshot of their post with their Plum email address to daniella@withplum.com to have their fee waived for a year. If the person posting is not a Plum user then the fee will be waived for a random Plum user.

This means one post using the #investwithplum will result in one Plum user getting the Plum Plus fee waived for one year.

This offer is only available on from March 8th 2019 ending 6th April 2019. The year of Plum Plus free investing will run from April 2019 to April 2020.

The fee will be waived automatically, the user does not have to redeem or validate this in any way.

Please note fund and provider fees will still apply. For more information on fees click here.