UK law firm Mills & Reeve is among nine founding partners of an accreditation scheme to support the growth of the women’s health sector.
The FemTick initiative is designed to recognise financial and commercial service providers that help women’s health companies to start, operate, grow and scale. The initiative has been developed by CensHERship, an organisation dedicated to addressing structural bias impacting women’s health companies.
The other FemTick founding partners include HSBC Innovation Banking, Tokio Marine Kiln and Commerce, Withum, Practicus, Novabook, LT PR and Communia.
CensHERship’s 2026 Bias Burden report found that all women’s health companies surveyed had encountered barriers when trying to access financial or commercial services, including banking, payment processing and insurance. More than 60% said they had lost revenue as a result, while other respondents said those barriers had delayed launches and disrupted operations.
The report notes that in many cases those barriers stem from outdated classification systems and automated risk models that flag terms such as ‘menstrual’, ‘vagina’ and ‘sexual health’ as adult content or high-risk industries.
Gayle Curry, a partner at Mills & Reeve, said: “Women’s Health innovators need access to strong financial and commercial advisers. As one of the UK’s leading health and care law firms and arguably the leader in the legal issues faced by women’s health businesses, we’re absolutely delighted to join the other founding partners of FemTick. We look forward to working together to help this sector achieve its ambitions, solve the challenges and open the door to scale, success and healthier communities.”
The women’s health sector is expected to be worth $600bn by 2030, according to PwC.
Clio Wood, co-founder of CensHERship, said: “Women’s health is one of the largest and fastest-growing opportunities in global healthcare, yet the infrastructure supporting the sector has not always evolved at the same pace. Our founding partners for FemTick recognise the scale of the opportunity and are among the first movers helping build the infrastructure needed for the sector to scale.”
To become accredited, participating organisations complete an assessment of how they classify, review and support women’s health businesses in areas such leadership and accountability, risk classification and policy, and culture and customer experience.
Emma Stephens, head of growth and financing at HSBC Innovation Banking UK, said: “Women’s health is a fast-growing area of healthcare innovation with significant unmet need. We’re seeing high-quality innovation across the sector, but companies still face barriers to accessing capital, commercialising their products and scaling successfully. With one of the world’s strongest innovation ecosystems, the UK is well placed to drive progress in this space, and we’re proud to support the extraordinary innovators shaping its future.”
The deadline for nominations for the Women and Diversity in Law Awards 2027, which are hosted by GLP, has been extended to 23 October. Click here to make a nomination.
Email your news and story ideas to: [email protected]
