Once the financial services industry does a better job of explaining itself, more women may join its ranks, according to execs at AIG.

“This industry has quite frankly done a terrible job of explaining” what financial advisors do, said Jana Greer, chief executive of individual and group retirement products at AIG Inc., during the opening session of an AIG forum for women advisors Monday in San Diego.

“When women hear that it’s about ‘finance’ … that’s a turnoff for them,” Greer said.

“This is a relationship and people business,” Greer said. “So it’s important to [get that message out] because young people want to make a difference” for people in their careers.

Women tend to have the leadership skills that make for good advisors -- empathy, persuasiveness and flexibility, and having a need to get things done, said Erica McGinnis, chief executive of AIG Advisor Group.

“We’ve got to stop the myth that advisors need math skills or a financial background,” McGinnis said.

Of the eight advisors on AIG’s female advisory board, seven never intended to end up in financial services, and none were finance majors.

The advisory business is also about selling, which many women avoid, but so is the real estate market, which is dominated by females, McGinnis said.

Why the acceptance of real estate sales by women? “Women know homes,” McGinnis said. “It’s a product they’re very comfortable with. Financial advice has a lot of stigma attached to it that women are not comfortable with.”

In an interview with Financial Advisor, McGinnis said she is insisting her recruiters bring a woman to the table for every man. And the firm is in the second year of a mentoring program for younger women advisors, with 136 veteran advisors acting as mentors, including 36 men.

McGinnis is responsible for the four broker-dealers AIG owns--FSC Securities Corp., Royal Alliance Associates, SagePoint Financial and Woodbury Financial Services—which have about 6,000 advisors between them.

Separately, the firm plans to boost sales of life insurance products.

“We’d like to create a culture of protection at this firm,” McGinnis said. The company will roll out a new service, AIG Advisor Group Insurance Consulting Services, on April 1.

The new unit will offer point-of-sale support and education, with the help of outside general agencies that have partnered up, and products from nine other carriers other than AIG.

“It will be internal, so we can control the client experience better,” said Allison Couch, executive vice president of national sales, who McGinnis nabbed from Cetera Financial Group in May to beef up product areas.

AIG Advisor Group execs also reminisced about Bob Benmosche, the former head of AIG who guided the insurer through the financial crisis. Benmosche passed away
Friday.

He was “like a big brother on a playground full of bullies,” McGinnis said, recalling the bad press AIG had to suffer through.

Benmosche “pulled the AIG Advisor Group off the sales block,” she added, and ended up being a favorite of advisors for his bold, blunt management approach and accessibility from attending more than a dozen conferences and meeting more than 500 advisors in person.