Valerie Moran becomes the first black female entrepreneur ever to make it on to the list, worth £122 million for her fintech company Prepaid Financial Services where she is Head of Client Relations & Operations. Moran owns 81% of her company with business partner husband Noel Moran making them one of the world most successful couples in Financial Tech, with their company turning profits for 10 consecutive years. Born in Zimbabwe to a family of 5 children, she now resides in Ireland. So, the question is why is she the only black woman on the list making the list’s 1,000 after 31 editions?
Here are some factors that come into play. A huge lack of real business support includes access to mentors, gender discrimination, not having access to important networks, and the most important, access to capital. According to research businesses owned by black women, and as with women of all races, have lower revenues streams than those of men in the same demographic group. Reportedly many black women in business do not apply for bank loans due for fear of being turned down and they are more likely to be turned down by the banks. Again, when it comes to angel investors and private investment there is a trend for investors to invest in entrepreneurs they can relate to. Hence the need for more angel investors to be representative across gender and race: again, placing women and black women are at a disadvantage. In 2018 it was reported that businesses owned by women across all races, received less than 6 percent of venture capital investment money which is a completely unrepresentative in terms of their contribution to the economy. Black women tend to seek less traditional forms of funding like crowdfunding which has it benefits but do not offer long term security. With only one black woman on the Sunday Times Rich List in 2019 we hope it opens wider conversations and the banks and angel investors sit up and rethink how they deal with female entrepreneurs as a whole, also recognizing that black female businesses are growing faster than any other business segment in terms of the numbers starting new businesses.
