NatWest and Deloitte join as Women's Prize partners

The Women’s Prize for Fiction has revealed that three partners - Baileys, Deloitte and NatWest - will be supporting the 2018 award.

The prize - known for the past four years as the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, and before that, the Orange Prize for Fiction (1996-2012) - will now revert to being named the "Women’s Prize for Fiction", after embarking on a new collective sponsorship model.

Among the three partners for this year is cream liqueur company Baileys, which held the title sponsorship of the prize from 2013 – 2017. It is joined by professional services firm Deloitte, specialised in providing audit, tax, consulting, and financial advisory services, and bank NatWest.
 
Joanna Prior, chair of the Women’s Prize for Fiction Board, said the three different partners all shared in its "ambition to celebrate women's voices and creativity" while the new collective model for sponsorship would give the award "a secure platform".

“We are thrilled to announce our 2018 partners today – it’s been a hard secret to keep," she said. "It’s exciting and inspiring to bring together the teams at Deloitte and NatWest who – together with our former headline sponsor, Baileys - each share our ambition to celebrate women’s voices and creativity. Working together in this collective way will give the prize a secure platform to showcase and celebrate fiction by women and take books written by women to wider audiences than ever before."

Prize spokesperson and founder director, novelist Kate Mosse added: "It will be wonderful to have the input and energies of new partners, to help us continue to develop and grow the prize into one of the most powerful platforms celebrating women’s voices in the world."
 
In May 2017, the award announced it would be adopting a new sponsorship model from 2018 that would see it supported by a family of sponsors, a group of leading brands and businesses from different sectors, rather than by a single title sponsor, and that Baileys, which held the title sponsorship from 2013 - 2017, would be part of this family of sponsors. 

At the time Mosse said the new model would give the prize "a new sustainable way of working in a changing world" and enable it to reach "an even wider range of readers through the varied and long-term partnerships we are building".

The  £30,000 cash award is being retained, which is provided by an anonymous donor in perpetuity.