AKQA: DEGIRO and UN Women’s Pink Chip

In a world where only 7% of CEOs are women and investor bias often leads to stock sell-offs when female CEOs are appointed, DEGIRO – Europe’s largest investment app – sought to challenge this status quo. Partnering with AKQA, they launched Pink Chip, a pioneering initiative aimed at reframing market biases and demonstrating the profitability of investing in women-led businesses.

Pink Chip is the first live index to track and promote the performance of women-led companies. This innovative approach used AI to compile an open dataset of female-led businesses and measure their performance against global benchmarks. The Pink Chip index is freely accessible on PinkChip.org and the DEGIRO app, allowing investors to directly see the benefits of investing in women-led businesses.

The launch on International Women's Day, coinciding with the stock market opening at Euronext, included a significant push across social media and outdoor placements, resulting in over 2 million impressions and attracting nearly 70,000 visitors to PinkChip.org within its first week. The campaign was launched in partnership with UN Women NL, who praised its potential to increase awareness and investment in women-led companies.

The impact of the Pink Chip campaign was immediate and significant. Within two weeks of its launch, the index saw over 14,500 new investors, leading to a 6.7% increase in stock prices for the companies listed. Since then, the index has climbed an additional 9.48%, consistently outperforming market benchmarks.

The campaign successfully challenged investor biases by providing transparent, accessible data showing the financial benefits of investing in women-led businesses. This not only supported the bottom lines of investors but also helped promote gender equality in the corporate world.