We have highlighted the significant gap in VC funding between male and female founder teams numerous times in 2023, and the consequent missed opportunities for investors, customers and the Australian economy.
But one such all-female founded team that has attracted good investment (largely thanks to female investors and family offices) is Verve Super, co-founded by Christina Hobbs and Alex Andrews, with the mission of making superannuation better for women.
Future Super announced the acquisition of Verve Super on Wednesday, highlighting a successful exit story for the co-founders and investors, as well as the powerful outcomes women founders achieve for their businesses and their overall mission.
Hobbs shared news of the acquisition on LinkedIn, five years after launching the first superannuation fund to be led by women and tailored for women. She said they were delighted to announce the deal that would secure Verve’s long-term future.
She also highlighted a key point in addressing the timing of the acquisition: the fact one co-founder was pregnant, and another had a newborn, as they were overseeing the details of the move. This is important, given the stories founders have shared about pregnancy discrimination and concerns about timing when speaking with investors and pursuing business development.
Verve will be sitting as a subsidiary under the Future Group and will continue to be led by women, with Hobbs and Andrews at the helm. Verve currently has 7000 members, mostly women, and around $271 million in retirement savings.
Hobbs said they will continue to tailor their offering to women but will be leveraging Future Group’s expertise in investment management, administration and compliance. At the same time, Verve will be looking to extend its feminist lens across the super offering of the entire Future Group, to advocate for fairer retirement outcomes for a much broader membership base.
“In a rapidly consolidating industry, the move is a clear win-win,” Hobbs said. “And Future Super is a natural home for us given its B-Corp status, focus on ethical investing and equality, and existing strong feminist workplace policies.”
Earlier this year, we reported on Verve announcing a pre-Series A $3 million raise, just after learning that in 2022, a tiny three percent of investments went to all women-founded teams, and just around 10% to teams with at least one female founder. The raise, announced in June, closed early and was oversubscribed, which Verve noted came down to the impact focus of the business, their business model, and its existing member base
Future Super non-executive director Geraldine Chin Moody described Verve as a “brilliant fit” for the Future Group, given Verve’s overarching goal of providing ethical investing in a way that is tailored for women.
Key to Verve’s success also is their agile, nimble nature, said Hobbs, with the shared values their female-founded teams had on campaigning for women’s economic equality.
But she also said that they have always known that the larger they are, the stronger they are. “We have a larger advocacy voice when we speak on behalf of more members; we can create more impact with our investments when we have more funds to influence; and we can continue our great service with competitive fees when we leverage greater economies of scale.”
Hobbs launched Verve Super in 2018, and was later named the Women’s Agenda Emerging Entrepreneur of The Year in 2019 at the Women’s Agenda Leadership Awards.
This article was first published by Women’s Agenda.
Angela Priestley is the publisher and founding editor of Women’s Agenda. She’s an author, journalist and passionate advocate for workplace gender equality and diversity. Her first book is Women Who Seize the Moment.
