NatWest expands support for women founders as UK funding gap remains severe. NatWest has announced a major expansion of its Accelerator programme for women entrepreneurs, launching a new Female Founders Community, wider mentoring networks, and stronger investor access across the UK. The new Female Founders Community, launched inside the NatWest Accelerator App, has already crossed 400 members within just two weeks. The group is designed to connect women founders with mentors, investors, networking opportunities, and peer support. NatWest is also expanding "She Scales," its women-focused coworking and networking programme across the UK. The latest move comes as women-led businesses continue to face one of the biggest funding gaps in the UK startup ecosystem. NatWest says the Female Founders Community is now the fastest-growing group inside its Accelerator programme. Table of Contents Women founders still struggle to secure funding. Despite more women starting businesses, funding remains heavily unequal. Female founders in the UK still receive only around 2% of total venture capital investment, while male-led teams continue to secure the vast majority of available funding. Women from ethnic minority backgrounds face even greater challenges, especially in sectors like AI, fintech, and technology where investor money is growing fastest. The scale of the gap has become a major issue because women-led businesses are growing across multiple industries, including health, retail, professional services, and real estate. Yet many still struggle to access the same investor networks and scale-up support that male founders receive more easily. NatWest adds mentorship and scale-up support. One of the biggest parts of the latest expansion is NatWest's partnership with Foundervine, which is launching "The Scale Circle," a programme for founders who have been running businesses for at least 18 months and are ready to grow further. NatWest has also partnered with Bae HQ, a network for British Asian founders, investors, and operators. Through this partnership, the bank plans to host events across the UK in 2026 to help women entrepreneurs connect with investors, mentors, and industry experts outside traditional startup hubs like London. This shift matters because many women founders do not only need funding. They also need stronger business connections, better visibility, experienced mentors, and easier access to growth opportunities. NatWest surpasses £2 billion lending goal. NatWest's latest announcement follows a major lending milestone reached at the end of 2025. The bank revealed that it had already surpassed its original goal of lending £2 billion to women-led businesses, reaching £2.84 billion across more than 55,900 loans. The average loan size stood at around £50,700. Health-related businesses received the largest share of support, followed by leisure, retail, commercial real estate, and professional services. NatWest also now has more than 1,000 Women in Business specialists across the UK, while more than half of the founders in its Accelerator programme are women. NatWest plans bigger founder ecosystem. NatWest is now aiming to grow its overall Accelerator community to 50,000 founders by the end of 2026, up sharply from around 12,000 members supported in 2025. The bank is also planning to open more Accelerator hubs and increase partnerships with universities across the UK. The wider goal is to create a larger founder ecosystem where women entrepreneurs have better access to capital, business support, training, and growth opportunities from the early startup stage through to expansion. NatWest's latest move shows that women founders are no longer being treated as a niche category. As funding gaps continue, banks and investors are under growing pressure to give women-led businesses stronger access to capital, networks, and long-term growth support.

Wray & Nephew, in partnership with Foundervine, has launched the fourth year of its Wray Forward programme, a free initiative that supports Black founders across the UK by giving them access to funding, educational workshops and networking events.