Female-focused robo Ellevest adds human advisers after $34m round
Ellevest, a robo-adviser focusing on female investors, has raised $34m in its latest funding round. The funding will allow the robo-adviser to add human advisers to its platform, a move aimed at luring in older, more sceptical clients. Ellevest focuses on investing with women's particular needs in mind, addressing factors like a longer life expectancy than men and earnings peaking earlier than male counterparts, with the ultimate aim of closing the gender pay gap.
Investing tailored to women is turning out to be big business. Ellevest, the platform for investing for women, just raised $34 million.

Investing for women sounds like it could be an insulting idea—don't women understand investing the normal way?—but that's not what Ellevest is doing. The platform tailors investments to the realities of women's careers: they face a gender pay gap, they live longer, and their salaries peak earlier than men's. That means they need to save for retirement differently.

Ellevest is hoping to beat out some of the roboadvising competition—and close the gender savings gap at the same time.

Rethink Impact, a venture capital firm that looks for companies run by women, led the funding round. PSP Growth, Salesforce Ventures, CreditEase Fintech Investment Fund, LH Holdings also participated, as did Ellevest's returning investors.

With this funding round, Ellevest will add human financial planners as an option to complement its roboadvising services. That's something other investing startups like Betterment have also added recently. Those changes have helped roboadvisors tap slightly older customers who are more comfortable using a roboadvisor when there's also someone they can talk through their finances with.

“I’m thrilled these global leaders—who are female 'firsts' and technology innovators—are joining Ellevest’s mission to end the gender gap in investing and personal finance,” Ellevest CEO and Wall Street veteran Sallie Krawcheck said in a press release. “We will use this new funding to build on the momentum in our digital offering, and develop solutions with women in our community who are asking us for human interaction and financial planning services.”