Starner: Margaret Chow Stanner is one of the women who blazed a trail that others are now following.

    When Margaret Chow Starner entered the profession 25 years ago, she was armed with little more than curiosity and a fierce conviction that fee-based financial planning was the wave of the future. At that time the CFP designation was only a couple of years old, and fellow would-be planners met in ad hoc study groups, hastily planned conferences, in others' homes and over the phone. It was not unusual for Starner to find herself the only woman in a sea of 100 men.

    Today, Starner, a CFP licensee and a senior vice president of financial planning, is the top woman producer at Raymond James & Associates, with over $200 million in assets under management and four employees at her office in Coral Gables, Fla. "Two decades ago, I cut a deal with Raymond James that would be totally unheard of today, she says. "We agreed that I wouldn't have to make any money the first year. I was so naïve that I simply asked for what I wanted and got it."

    In retrospect it seems easy, says Judy Shine, of Shine Investment Advisory Services in Englewood, Colo., who manages $400 million When Margaret Chow Starner entered the profession 25 years ago, she was armed with little more than curiosity and a fierce conviction that fee-based financial planning was the wave of the future. At that time the CFP designation was only a couple of years old, and fellow would-be planners met in ad hoc study groups, hastily planned conferences, in others' homes and over the phone. It was not unusual for Starner to find herself the only woman in a sea of 100 men.
   
    Today, Starner, a CFP licensee and a senior vice president of financial planning, is the top woman producer at Raymond James Financial Services, with over $200 million in assets under management and four employees at her office in Coral Gables, Fla. "Two decades ago, I cut a deal with Raymond James that would be totally unheard of today, she says. "We agreed that I wouldn't have to make any money the first year. I was so naïve that I simply asked for what I wanted and got it."

    In retrospect it seems easy, says Judy Shine, of Shine Investment Advisory Services in Englewood, Colo., who manages $400 million in assets. But that was hardly the case. "Yes we had the first-mover advantage, but we also had to make the first move," she says. "When we started out, financial planning was not a profession. What we were doing was like the Wild, Wild West, making up things as we went along. For awhile, everyone around us was making six figures and we were lucky to bring in $20,000."

    Looking at young people, particularly women, struggling to enter the profession, Shine has empathy-to a point. It was a lot harder when there wasn't a profession, only a macho sales culture. "One of the big issues today is how to create jobs for financial planners, but back then we had no chance in hell of getting a job. We were ready for the profession, but it wasn't ready for us," she recalls.

    Shine also remembers being the sole woman in study groups and at conferences. "Back in those days, we knew every other woman and their phone numbers, practically," she says. But what made all of today's advisors successful, she says, had nothing to do with gender. "Those who succeeded just really believed in the profession."

    Two decades later, the profession has richly rewarded the pioneering women and men who stuck with it, often at great personal and financial cost. As more and more institutions offer financial consulting services, job opportunities are becoming more plentiful. Those who can stick out the first few years reap the rewards. According to the Financial Planning Association, median total compensation-base salary plus any bonus or commissions-for financial advisors was $91,984 in 2002, and practitioners who own all or part their own business can take home much more.

    Today women make up roughly 25% of CFP designees nationwide, according to the CFP Board of Standards. Currently 10,788 women hold the CFP designation, an increase of more than 80% since 1991. And 29% of the 1,170 NAPFA members are women. Those numbers represent a huge triumph, say women advisors.

    Compare that to Great Britain, where just 5% of the estimated 25,000 independent financial advisors are women, according to the Daily Mail of London. British women look to the United States as a model for how their profession might grow.

    With the fee-based financial planning paradigm replacing traditional models at many U.S. brokerage firms and banks, opportunities are growing for women-and men-who want to enter the field. These institutions are actively seeking to recruit women, not only to appear progressive, but also to test the notion that women make more suitable advisors for some clients. Some firms have established in-house women's councils that provide mentoring programs and arrange yearly conferences.  Last October the Raymond James & Associates Women's Symposium  attracted 200 women to Tampa, some from as far away as Washington State, Maine and Alaska.

First « 1 2 3 4 5 » Next