Pink Chip takes information that has been hidden in plain sight and reworks it into a first-of-its-kind financial tool that upends traditional consumer behaviour while rebalancing gender disparity in the business world. Pink Chip isn’t just a campaign or a cause, it’s a real-world tool with real value for its users. It has already been harnessed by thousands of people across Europe and that will soon expand to other markets around the world. Last year, Pink Chip was recognised by D&AD’s Future Impact jury while in development. The future is now and Pink Chip is making a real difference.

This work is rooted in the global movement towards gender equality and diversity in the workplace. While there have been strides towards gender parity in recent decades, a pervasive bias against women in leadership positions hasn’t gone away. This bias can manifest in all sorts of insidious ways, such as investors being more likely to sell their shares in a company once a woman is appointed as its leader, regardless of her qualifications or track record - placing female leaders at a disadvantage before their tenure has even started. Pink Chip is on a mission to reverse that bias and, though it is designed to make a difference across the globe, its first iteration was built using American businesses. The reason for this is two-fold. Firstly, although DEGIRO is a European company, its user base takes a greater interest in the American market than any other - helping to get the project off the ground with as great an impact as possible. Secondly, America is home to the world’s largest financial markets, the NYSE and the NASDAQ. By focusing on businesses that were listed in the nation home to these financial powerhouses, the project could be sure to have more eyes on its launch than if it had been focused on businesses in any other market. The bias that Pink Chip is devoted to fighting, however, is found in every corner of the planet and so the project is already focused on expanding into other major markets around the world.

DEGIRO, Europe’s largest investment app, believes that investing isn’t just about money, it can make a better world. Through its platform, it highlights ESG scores so investors can make informed decisions and it releases educational content to help women get their start on the investment ladder. However, 4 in 5 investors are men and research shows that they are biased against female leaders even though female leaders tend to offer better returns. Today, just 7% of global CEOs are women. This isn’t just bad for society, it’s a poor investment strategy. DEGIRO recognised that their own platform had the ability to reverse this bias and, in doing so, boost their users’ returns while supporting women in business. While data blindspots and male investor reticence to change long-standing habits may have been stubborn obstacles to overcome, the potential to make a real difference made them hurdles worth clearing.

Pink Chip is a first-of-its-kind live index designed to make the success of female leadership impossible for investors to ignore by reframing a moral failure as a financial one. The index, initially for the US market, tracks the performance of female-led businesses and measures it against industry benchmarks and direct male competitors. For the first time, investors can see for themselves how investing in women is better for their bottom line and, through DEGIRO’s platform, choose to buy shares in women-led companies that caught their attention. The initiative, however, isn’t just for the benefit of investors. By promoting the power of female leadership, it contributes to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 5.5: Ensure women’s equal opportunities for leadership in political, economic and public life - because of this, UN Women NL joined as a launch partner to offer guidance during development and amplify Pink Chip’s message.

October 2022 - First contact with DEGIRO

October 2022 - Agency team forms

November 2022 - Pink Chip is born

November 2022 - First contact with UN Women

January 2023 - Thematic becomes official tech partner

February 2023 - Pink Chip, DEGIRO, & UN Women begin discussions about launching the index

April 2023 - First Index incorporated through research and partnership with Thematic

May 2023 - Agency begins design, development, and storytelling to bring the Pink Chip platform to life (across a website, unique social channels, and supportive assets)

March 2023 - Euronext invites Pink Chip to attend the ringing of the bell on IWD

September 2023 - UN Women NL confirm their endorsement of Pink Chip

Nov 2023 - DEGIRO confirm Pink Chip rollout on their platform and strategic discussions begin on where/how/when

January 2024 - alignment with DEGIRO to launch an IWD campaign

January - March 2024: Creative development on campaign assets to launch Pink Chip

February 2024 - Advisory board is formed, development of additional indices for other markets begins

27th February 2024 - Soft launch of Pink Chip - owned channels, Linked In, DEGIRO social owned channels, index goes live on the Degiro app

8th March 2024 - IWD Pink Chip official launch. Full digital OOH campaign goes live, Pink Chip team attends the Euronext ringing of the bell at the opening of the Dutch market (represented by UN Women NL), Pink Chip team launches a reconstituted version of the index (and announces it will do so on an annual basis)

March 2024 - Conversations begin with investment platforms around the world that want to host Pink Chip, while investors get in touch to request indices for their markets. Academics also request to cite Pink Chip in upcoming research papers.

April 2024 - Bloomberg hosts Pink Chip ticker on its platform

Pink Chip used AI and name recognition software to trawl through an extensive data-set of corporate structure filings and create a list of women-led companies, a list that didn’t exist before. In addition to requiring a female leader (Pink Chip is inclusive of all female-identifying people), the index had criteria based on market capital and consistent revenue growth to rule out “caretaker CEOs” and the glass cliff effect. DEGIRO then enlisted Thematic, ​​an AI-powered investment research platform that collects the back-end data on which Pink Chip is built and refreshes the list of companies behind the index on a daily basis. It lives primarily on its own website, pinkchip.org, where its performance, the companies featured, and the methodology used to create it are freely available for anyone to access. Pink Chip is also available on the DEGIRO app where investors can compare its success to other indices they follow and choose to directly invest in women-led businesses. DEGIRO also maintains a Pink Chip Top List that highlights Pink Chip’s top performing companies.

Pinkchip.org attracted 70,000 visitors within its first week. Within three weeks, over 14,500 DEGIRO users invested in Pink Chip companies. In that time, those companies saw a 6.7% stock price increase while the index climbed 9.48%. Overall, Pink Chip has outperformed market benchmarks by over 80% and keeps climbing. It is championed by academics who now have an open data-set of female-led companies to use across their research. With UN Women NL and grassroots activists on-board, Pink Chip made over 58m online impressions, reached over 85m people, and was added to Bloomberg. With an advisory board established across five countries, other investment platforms are in discussions to host Pink Chip, while new indices are in development for additional markets. Better still, with its data included in a variety of academic studies, Pink Chip can impact the perception of female leaders beyond the business world.