Participation in capital markets remains one of the primary channels for long-term wealth building in America. Understanding racial and gender disparities in the use and accessibility of investing opportunities is therefore an important part of broader efforts to close racial wealth gaps. Investing platforms play a key role in making investing more widely accessible by  introducing new investors to the opportunities available and providing them with access to information they need to succeed.

This report provides insights into how platforms can do this more effectively, presenting the results of Commonwealth’s recent pilot investigating barriers to investing for women of color. For this research, we partnered with retail investing platform Public.com to understand the experiences and behaviors of a group of women—predominantly women of color—with little to no investing experience as they invested using seed funds distributed by Commonwealth. We sought a deeper understanding of the needs, desires, and subjective experience of this group through surveys and in-depth interviews as they navigated their investing journeys.