73. Financielle: the education app that’s fighting the gender literacy gap

Marketing Award Nominee

To recognise the startups that demonstrate the most creative and effective method for building early-stage brand awareness.

Startups 100: Marketing Award

Founders: Laura Pomfret and Holly Holland
Year founded: 2020
Website: financielle.co.uk

Movement on the gender finance gap is progressing slowly. According to the OECD, women still have significantly lower money literacy rates than men in most countries. To close this gap, and support the financial education of women, sisters Laura Pomfret and Holly Holland founded Financielle.

Financielle is a finance app for women that features a budget planner, detailed money guides and access to a community of over 200,000 likeminded people – all with the mission of helping women take back control of their savings and income.

Pomfret and Holland originally built an MVP PDF playbook giving people a step-by-step guide to managing money and being financially well. When they realised people were happy to pay for it, they knew there was an unmet customer demand for female-led financial guidance. The Financielle Playbook within the app offers exactly this.

“Combining the right content, tools and community technology in one place whilst at the same time selling the product at an accessible price made it difficult to start – especially when funding in the VC tech space is so poor for female founders,” says Pomfret.

Now, Financielle names key industry angels like Tony Prestedge, former deputy CEO of Nationwide, Anthony Morrow, former CEO of Open Money, and Mark Hartley, CEO of Bankifi amongst its backers. Financielle has even been voted Apple’s App of the Day – twice.

It was difficult to start – especially when funding in the VC tech space is so poor for female founders.

We’ve also nominated Financielle for the Startups 100 Marketing Award in recognition of its no-nonsense approach to financial education for women. Our judges particularly liked Financielle’s conversational weekly podcast, The Vault, which makes listening to complex financial advice feel as effortless as chatting to your mates over a cuppa.

By 2030, Pomfret and Holland want Financielle to be a global female finance platform worth eight figures. Its unique and informative approach to becoming THE financial education platform for women earns it a spot on the Startups 100 Index for 2025.