Research from Bowmore Wealth Group shows that female entrepreneurs made £8.2bn last year from business sales. While Bowmore implies this is from last year, a closer look at the data shows something else. This is based on data obtained through freedom of information (FOI) requests to HMRC for the year 2022/23. It, therefore, makes the Bowmore claim misleading.
In that same period, data from male entrepreneurs showed they made 25.32bn. That’s 3x the amount that female entrepreneurs made. The details make it hard to know if this is an issue of the valuation of the companies or their profitability.
It’s also impossible to know if female entrepreneurs are better at monetising than their male counterparts. That’s because Bowmore did not provide any indication of how many businesses this covers and the split of female/male ownership.
What does emerge from this research is that a significant challenge for female entrepreneurs is access to venture capital and private equity backing. Bowmore also says that this extends to debt finance. It cites data from the British Business Bank Annual Report and Accounts, 2024. It says that data shows that only 40% of the Bank’s start-up loans went to women-led businesses. In the 2025 report, that figure drops to 39%.
Strangely, this research does not cite from other research carried out by the British Business Bank into Venture Capital Funding. That report accepts that access to venture capital is not a level playing field. It goes on to state, “However, through consistent and meaningful action, the venture capital industry can drive change to unlock the huge untapped potential of diverse entrepreneurs across the UK.”
A need to do better
The research cites the example of Kate Price. She secured £7m in funding for her wellness brand Ancient + Brave. She goes on to comment that too many women are locked out of such capital funding.
The report backs that up with data from the Invest In Women Taskforce. It reveals that in the first half of 2024, all-female-founded businesses received just £145m in funding. That is just 1.8% of the total funding in that period and was down from the 2.5% invested in the previous year.
The Taskforce has said it will address that. Going forward, its “investment pool will be deployed via female investment decision-makers across the UK, recognising that female investors are twice as likely to invest in female-led and mixed businesses, breaking down the systemic barriers faced by women entrepreneurs and investors alike.”
It will be interesting to see if, in the latter half of 2024 and 2025, it achieves that goal. At present, there are no numbers available.
Gill Millen, MD of Bowmore Financial Planning, said, “It’s positive to see so many female entrepreneurs now building and selling high-quality companies. However, many female entrepreneurs report that the playing field is still not level.
“The situation is improving, but not quickly. Even when there is a concerted effort from organisations to improve the funding gap.
“The reality is too many brilliant female founders are shut out of growth capital and that’s a barrier to growth for the whole UK economy.”
Investment is not the only challenge
Millen also goes on to talk about other biases against female entrepreneurs. She comments that even when they successfully exit a business, their expertise is not recognised. It is harder for them to gain non-executive positions at companies compared to their successful male counterparts.
Another level of business affects the advice they receive on exiting a business. Millen also calls out the level of advice on how to reinvest monies earned from exiting a business. She goes on to say, “One of the key challenges facing successful entrepreneurs – male and female – is how to sensibly reinvest the proceeds from a business sale to provide for their retirement.
“However, research suggests that women are less likely to seek advice on investments than men, partly because there are a far lower number of female financial advisers than male.”
“If female entrepreneurs are not getting the right levels of financial advice and are not being advised on the right, tax-efficient investment strategies then that is really going to impact the quality of their life once they sell their businesses.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean?
It’s 2025, and there is still a conversation going on about funding equality and how entrepreneurs are treated. In this case, it’s about the equality between females and males rather than a wider look at equality issues. Despite that, it shows that at all levels, from venture capital to private equity and banks, men find it easier to get access to funding.
However, there are some glaring challenges with this research. The first is that it doesn’t provide a key number of how many females vs males exited during the period it covers. For example, if this relates to ten women and 40 men, then the numbers shift substantially.
It would show that each woman, on average, made £820 million compared to £633 million for their counterparts. It is such a basic item to have missed out of the analysis, and it’s hard to know why Bowmore made this mistake.
Another missing fact is the age of the entrepreneurs. Do female entrepreneurs exit earlier than their male counterparts? This affects the comment on exit advice. How many want to reinvest or retire? How many were looking for non-exec positions? None of this is provided, and it would have made this a much more interesting and valuable piece of research.
But perhaps the biggest question here is why claim that this is current data when it is not. Calling data from 2022/23 data from last year is disingenuous. It also meant that they didn’t use more recent numbers, such as the latest data from the British Business Bank or the Invest in Women Taskforce.
Despite all of that, however, a conversation is needed as to why there is such disparity, especially with a UK Government that is committed to solving that.
