The Scotiabank Women Initiative has increased its funding commitment to women entrepreneurs in Canada to $10 billion by 2025. An initial $3 billion deployment was fulfilled ahead of schedule last year. The program has further enhanced its contribution, which today is over $4 billion in capital deployment.
Commitment to women entrepreneurs
“We’ve seen incredible success and growth in The Scotiabank Women Initiative in its first three years, with over $4 billion deployed to date and thousands of women engaged across Canada,” says Dan Rees, Scotiabank’s Group Head of Canadian Banking. “We surpassed our original commitment early, as we helped women entrepreneurs transition to a virtual environment during unprecedented economic challenges. With a renewed $10 billion commitment, we are furthering the Bank’s mission to advance women-owned and women-led businesses, which are essential components to the recovery of the Canadian economy.”
Read more about the success and growth of the Scotiabank Women Initiative here.
Key milestones
The Scotiabank Women Initiative has accomplished many key milestones since its inception, including:
- Engaged +13,000 women-led entrepreneurs through Un-Mentorship Boot Camps and Mentorship sessions that help women network and explore business challenges.
- Collaborated with +15 organizations including StrikeUP, The Forum, Réseau des Femmes d’affaires du Québec and MNP.
- Integrated The Scotiabank Women Initiative into Global Banking and Markets (GBM), Global Wealth Management (GWM) and International Banking (IB)
- Delivered tailored programs designed specifically for women-led businesses in Jamaica and Costa Rica.
- Inaugurated Women in Auto Accelerator, a mentoring and networking program to help women build careers in the Quebec automotive industry.
- Initiated The Scotiabank Women Initiative Mentor Program, which pairs women entrepreneurs with business leaders and experienced entrepreneurs for one-to-one mentorship.
- Launched The Scotiabank Women Initiative Digital Hub in collaboration with Shopify, Google Canada, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Facebook and HubSpot. The partnerships deliver key resources to help women entrepreneurs adapt to uncertain economic times.
As part of its increased commitment, The Scotiabank Women Initiative will continue to provide unbiased access to capital and tailored solutions, bespoke specialized education, holistic advisory services, and mentorship.
For more information on The Scotiabank Women Initiative, visit www.scotiabankwomeninitiative.com.
About The Scotiabank Women Initiative
The Scotiabank Women Initiative is a signature program designed to increase economic opportunity for women or non-binary to be successful. This globally expanding, unique offering helps thousands of women pursue their best professional and financial futures. It supports women to take their careers and businesses further, collaborates with inclusion-focused leaders and companies, provides women entrepreneurs with equitable access to funding, and helps women take charge of their finances. The Scotiabank Women Initiative breaks down barriers to empower women to succeed on their own terms. For more information, visit scotiabankwomeninitiative.com.
About Scotiabank
Scotiabank is a leading bank in the Americas. Guided by our purpose “for every future”, we help our customers, their families and their communities achieve success. Our broad range of advice, products and services include personal and commercial banking, wealth management and private banking, corporate and investment banking, and capital markets. Scotiabank has a team of approximately 90,000 employees and assets of $1.2 trillion (as of January 31, 2022). For more information, please visit https://www.scotiabank.com/ca/en/personal.html.
For more stories on the gender funding gap, read our interview with Lauren Washington on Lioness.
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