💌 Issue 134: Bank blocking bias | Matresa pre-seed | Mira x ŌURA partnership | theblood validates menstrual blood diagnostics |

The global weekly briefing on women's health innovation and Femtech

Feb 18, 2026

Welcome to issue #134 FutureFemHealth, (w/c 16 Feb 2026) — the global weekly briefing on women’s health innovation, trusted by 9,200+ investors, innovators and leaders.

🌟 In this week’s briefing:

❌ Why women’s health companies struggle to access bank accounts and business insurance.
🤰🏼 Maternal health AI start-up Matresa raises £315,000 in pre-seed funding
🩸 theblood partners with SGS to validate menstrual blood diagnostics.
💍 Mira and ŌURA link hormone testing with wearable data in new app integration.

Do you have news to share? Let me know at anna@futurefemhealth.com

❌ Why women’s health companies struggle to access bank accounts and business insurance

low angle photo of city high rise buildings during daytime — Photo by Sean Pollock on Unsplash

When ex-lawyer Kalila Bolton co-founded her sexual wellbeing company SheSpot, getting business insurance felt like a small, mundane task to check off the list. She spent a few hundred pounds on a standard policy - but four months later, the insurer cancelled without warning.

“I called them up and they said they needed to remove us because we breached their firm’s ethics and values. I then asked for a copy of the ethics in question and it was clear that these were unwritten with no formal policy to direct me to.”

Kalila endured a painful process securing new insurance: 12+ rejections over many months before finally securing much more expensive policy.

Similar barriers show up elsewhere. In Germany, Katie Payne faced similar issues with banking for her STI-prevention biotech company OhMyV. She chose a smaller and newer ‘challenger bank’ knowing that a larger, traditional bank “doesn’t want to take my business.” When she later attempted to crowdfund, several large U.S. platforms rejected her startup for “not aligning with community standards.” The campaign ultimately failed.

These are not isolated stories. New research by CensHERship in partnership with blended investment platform The Case For Her, finds that women’s health and Femtech businesses across the UK and Europe are being locked out of essential financial infrastructure — including banking, payment processing, business insurance, ecommerce and app-store access.

The reason is that they are misclassified when risk-averse systems that don’t understand women’s health wrongly treat them as “adult” or high-risk, according to CensHERship’s new report.

The Bias Burden: why women’s health businesses struggle to access financial services, draws on 14 months of research across Europe and the UK including interviews with startups such as HANX, Perift, Mestrualia, and Ove Care. It shows how outdated classification systems, over-compliance and cultural discomfort combine to create structural barriers for legitimate women’s health companies.

Further examples include:

A UK founder who was told her business was categorised alongside firearms and tobacco because it referenced sexual health.
A European medical pelvic floor device repeatedly mislabelled as “sexual entertainment,” affecting both fees and platform access.
A UK startup selling vaginal microbiome-friendly condoms refused service by a payment provider and deemed to be adult services.

Regular readers will know that I am one of the co-founder of CensHERship and this new report follows our earlier research into the social media censorship that many businesses in women’s health face.

Crucially though, this new report concludes that the challenges with financial services are fixable. They aren’t due to regulation but stem from how risk is interpreted inside institutions: internal culture, unconscious bias and knowledge gaps.

Left unaddressed however, they compound the sector’s existing structural disadvantages, from the funding gap to the research and data gap, slowing the growth of what is soon expected to be a $100billion women’s health market.

As founder Kalila Bolton explained to us for the report:

“We just want to know that there will be a fair process that isn’t left to discretionary opinions and values..”

Read the full story: FutureFemHealth and access the report here.

Have your say…

Last week’s poll asked: What do you think is the biggest blocker to menstrual blood diagnostics becoming mainstream? Your views were really split on this one across stigma (36%), funding (23%), clinical validation (20%), integration with care pathways (15%) and other blockers accounting for 7%.

💰 Capital flows: where are investors placing bets?

📌 UK: Maternal health AI start-up Matresa raises £315k in pre-seed funding. The UK faces an ongoing maternal health crisis with maternal deaths now at their highest level in more than 20 years. Matresa, due to launch this summer, is a clinical grade preventative maternal health platform for early screening and diagnostics, founded by a former nurse Mari-Carmen Sanchez-Morris. It also offers support postpartum and as a benefit for businesses to support their employees as they return to work. SFC Capital led this round. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

🌟 Industry moves and strategic shifts

a gloved hand holding a test tube filled with blood — Photo by Adrian Sulyok on Unsplash

📌 GERMANY/ SWITZERLAND: theblood partners with SGS to validate menstrual blood diagnostics. Menstrual blood is increasingly being explored as a potential source of biomarkers linked to women’s health (did you catch our deep dive on this last week?). Now, Berlin-based theblood will collaborate with Swiss testing and certification group SGS to help build a robust scientific and regulatory foundation. “We are ensuring that the exploration of menstrual blood is guided by scientific rigor, quality and long-term trust” says Isabelle Guenou, founder and CEO of theblood. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

📌 US: Mira and ŌURA link hormone testing with wearable data in new app integration. Layering hormone data with continuous biometrics is fast becoming the new play in women’s health. In recent weeks Garmin announced a hormone-metabolic integration with Hello Inside, while startup Clair positioned itself around continuous, non-invasive hormone monitoring. Now Mira and ŌURA’s Oura ring bring lab-grade hormone readings into the same view as sleep, temperature and readiness data - with users opting in to connect the streams. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

📌 US: Kindbody unveils a next-gen fertility platform. Kindbody is expanding its network of IVF clinics by partnering with third-parties and integrating them into its tech platform and employer contracts to give patients broader access under one coordinated system. This upgrade also adds an AI care navigator, real-time benefits and medication tracking, predictive IVF success tools, plus expanded men’s health, menopause and pregnancy support. This shifts Kindbody’s care from point solution to more longitudinal reproductive care. Piloting in 2026 across 3 million covered lives, Kindbody also plans to introduce a savings guarantee model from 2027 for large employers, putting its own fees at risk if total fertility spend doesn’t fall. (Continue reading: Kindbody)

📌 US: Maven Clinic and Color Health partner to expand virtual oncofertility services. While 80,000 young adults are diagnosed with cancer in the U.S. each year, fewer than half report that their oncologist discussed fertility preservation with them. This collaboration integrates Color’s oncologist-led cancer management with Maven’s family-building platform. This creates a “fast track” for patients to assess fertility risks and access preservation services (egg/sperm freezing) immediately upon diagnosis, before treatment windows close. Initially, these services will be deployed through employers and health plans. (Continue reading: Hit Consultant)

📌 AUSTRALIA: GenM partners with nationwide pharmacy chain. UK menopause brand GenM is partnering with Australia’s TerryWhite Chenmart to bring the MTick menopause-friendly shopping symbol to more than 620 pharmacies across the country. The roll-out will include dedicated in-store bays, educational signage and an online hub, with a reach of up to four million Australian women. GenM co-founder Heather Jackson said the deal validates the MTick as a global retail category. (Continue reading: Retail Times)

📌 US: Weight Watchers adds Pvolve fitness classes in GLP-1 support play. After Weight Watchers’ evolution into a telehealth company last year, it’s now bundling prescriptions with fitness in a model aimed at supporting long-term weight care. Pvolve’s own research found that participants saw significant increases in lean muscle mass in a 12-week program. It adds to Weight Watchers’ other wrap-around support including nutrition, behavior change, coaching and medical care. (Continue reading: Athletech News)

🩸 Research and women’s health news

📌 US: Two new FDA approvals for ovarian cancer. Thirteen years after Merck’s drug Keytruda was approved for use for skin cancer, it’s been approved as a second- or third-line treatment for patients with a certain type of ovarian cancer. Separately, Agilents has gained a green light for its accompanying test to identify patients who might best benefit from the drug. (Continue reading: Fiercebiotech)

📄 Policy watch: risks and opportunities

📌 U.S: Menopausal hormone therapy label changes. After the FDA’s November 2025 initiative to remove ‘black box’ warnings on HRT, US regulators have now approved labelling changes to six menopause hormone therapies. The updated labels remove warnings about cardiovascular disease, breast cancer and dementia risks, which had contributed to discouraging HRT use. (Continue reading: BioPharma Dive)

✅ Let’s partner in 2026?

Each month FutureFemHealth reaches 100,000+ women’s health innovators in 109+ countries across our newsletter, social media channels and website.

We are not a mass media channel, we are a high-trust, highly-targeted briefing read by the people who are building, funding and shaping women’s health.

In 2026 we have a limited number of partnerships for organisations who want to:

Lead the narrative on complex and/or emerging women’s health topics
Build credibility and trust with industry peers - founders, operators, clinicians and investors.
Engage leaders through thoughtful content that sparks connection, conversation and collaboration.

📩 2026 partnership slots are now open. To explore opportunities or request our media pack contact: anna@futurefemhealth.com

📆 Save the date

📌 LONDON: Imperial College Femtech Society Femtech Conference 2026. Saturday 28 February, 10am GMT - 4pm GMT.
🎟️ More info and tickets: Non-member tickets (£10), member tickets (£8)

📌 LONDON: Health2Tech - Setting the foundation for a future exit: Success in the US market as a UK medical device startup in women’s health (with Nishant Varma, co-founder of Fetal Pillow), Tuesday 24 February, 5.30pm GMT.
🎟️ Register here.

📌 VIRTUAL: Beyond the noise - how Garmin Health and Hello Inside can turn body signals into metabolic resilience. Wednesday 25 February, 4.30pm CET.
🎟️ Register here.

📌 LONDON: The Women’s Domain: CensHERship and the Femtech Economy. Navigating the digital barriers in women’s health. Thursday 26 Feb, 6pm GMT. (I’ll be joining my CensHERship co-founder Clio Wood to speak at this one!)
🎟️ Register here.

📌 LONDON: Endometriosis: Lived experience, psychology of chronic disease, innovation and research, with Nexus Connected and Barclays Innovation Hub. Wednesday 4 March, 8.15am GMT.
🎟️ Register here.

✅ Hiring now

📌 UK: Director of Program Management, EMEA and APAC, Oura

📌 UK: Project Manager, Marketing Ops, Oura

📌 US: Chief Medical Officer, US-based, fractional, Daye

📌 PORTUGAL: Senior Manager, Customer Insights and Analytics, Ferring Pharmaceutical

That’s all for this week! If you’ve missed any previous newsletter issues catch them all at futurefemhealth.com and do make sure to follow us on LinkedIn and you can connect with me directly.

Anna

Before you go: Want to partner with us? To explore opportunities or request our media pack contact: anna@futurefemhealth.com.

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