Southeast Regional Accelerator Launches $25 Million Fund Exclusively for Women-Led Fintech Start-ups
The new “FinHer Fund” targets the 2.2 % of U.S. fintech capital that currently reaches female founders and commits to 40 seed-stage deals by 2027.
Atlanta, November 19, 2025
The Southeast Fintech Accelerator (SFA) today announced the creation of a region’s first single-gender capital pool, the FinHer Fund, backed by a $25 million allocation from Georgia-based community-bank syndicate Community BancShares and the state pension fund. The accelerator will deploy $500 k–$1 million checks into 40 early-stage fintech companies with at least one female founder holding majority equity, beginning Q1 2026.
According to Crunchbase data released last month, companies with all-female founding teams received only 2.2 % of U.S. fintech venture dollars in 2025 despite research showing they generate 35 % higher cumulative revenue per dollar invested than all-male teams . “Investor bias, not performance, is the bottleneck,” said Dr. Keisha Williams, SFA’s managing director, citing findings from the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gaps in Entrepreneurial Capital report.
A 2024 IFC study of 42 accelerators across emerging markets found that male-led start-ups raise 2.6× more equity post-acceleration than female-led peers, underscoring the need for targeted capital . The FinHer Fund will pair each investment with a guaranteed slot in SFA’s 16-week investor-readiness program and a follow-on commitment to lead the next round up to $3 million.
“We are done waiting for parity to trickle down,” said Elena Ramirez, CEO of Community BancShares and newly appointed chair of the FinHer Investment Committee. “Our limited partners—pensioners and depositors—want measurable impact. If we can move the national fintech-female share from 2 % to 10 % inside five years, we will add an estimated $4.3 billion in enterprise value to the region.”
Market mapping by PitchBook shows the Southeast now hosts 120 fintech scale-ups, yet women-led companies accounted for 8 % of regional Series A rounds in 2024. The accelerator will open applications December 1, prioritizing embedded-finance, insure-tech, and credit models serving under-banked women. Portfolio companies will gain automatic pilot access to 45 community banks with $210 billion in combined assets, the largest such network in the country.
Initial anchor investors include the $68 billion Georgia Municipal Employees Retirement System, which last week increased its alternative-investment allocation to 3 % specifically for gender-lens strategies. “We see a 300 bps risk-adjusted return premium in women-run funds,” said Ramirez, referencing a 2024 analysis by the International Finance Corporation .
About the Southeast Fintech Accelerator
Launched in 2021, SFA is a public-private partnership between the Georgia Department of Economic Development, the Atlanta Federal Reserve, and 27 regional banks. The accelerator has graduated 62 companies that have raised $412 million in follow-on capital and created more than 1,800 jobs.
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