When financial advisor Rosemarie Moeller consults with a woman for the first time, it’s not unusual for the newcomer to burst into tears.

“We allow that. We take a break,” said Moeller, who works with divorced and widowed women at Freedom Divorce Advisors in Warren, New Jersey. “I greet them with a hug because I understand what they are going through. A lot of men can’t handle that.”

About 80 percent of Moeller’s women customers arrive through word of mouth or referrals from attorneys, but the divorced mother of two also lectures to appeal to women.

“I do a lot of public speaking to promote financial literacy among women,” Moeller told Financial Advisor. “I speak at the Governors Conference for Women, the Association of Insurance Women, the Women’s Physicians Organization and a lot of different organizations that gather professional women together.”

Finding women clients through group settings is one way to address the declining numbers who are using financial professionals. Nationally, only 31 percent of women use a financial professional, down from 48 percent in 2008, according to a Prudential study called Financial Experience & Behaviors Among Women, which polled 1,407 American women and 606 American men between the ages of 25 and 68.  

“It’s not a good trend,” said Jean Setzfand, vice president of financial security with AARP, who was among the cadre of women at the Four Seasons Hotel, in Manhattan, where data was presented to the press by Prudential executives. “There needs to be more facilitated resources to help them make longer-term decisions.”

Those facilitated resources include group discussions in the form of workshops and seminars through sororities, for example.

“It’s the time factor, that women don’t have time, and also the fear factor of addressing one’s reality,” said Marcia Beckford, financial advisor and agency recruiter with Prudential. “We’re finding that approaching women in a group setting and workshops where they are talking and asking questions among friends or colleagues is one situation in which women are more open to hiring a financial professional.”

The older a woman is the more likely she is to seek out assistance from a financial planner or advisor. About 45 percent of baby boomers use a financial professional compared with 31 percent of Gen Xers and 15 percent of millennials. “The declining use of financial professionals may be due in part to the vast amount of investment research and tools available on the Internet, which millennials and Gen Xers are often more likely to use than baby boomers,” said Lori Fouché, CEO with Prudential Group Insurance. “Women working with a financial professional report feeling much more confident about their finances than those who do not.”

Advisors living in states like Illinois, Minnesota, Nebraska and Ohio are in luck. Women in the midwest are more likely to engage a financial professional.

“In New York, for example, many women work around financial services so they are more prone to handling finances on their own,” said Jackie Chan, vice president of global market research with Prudential. “In the Midwest, they are using financial advisors because they are less confident about their ability given that they are less exposed to the topic of financial services.”

Some 39 percent of Midwestern women will use a financial planner compared with 26 percent in the Northeast and 12 percent in the South.

“If advisors clearly spell out the value they add, women will be more inclined to work with them,” Setzfand told Financial Advisor magazine. “Financial advisors can decipher the jargon, complicated numbers, calculations and position themselves as navigator to help people through the retirement landscape and issue judgments for various financial circumstances.”

With one in five women saying financial professionals don’t understand their needs, using jargon and a hardcore product sell is part of the problem.  

“Financial advisors must change their approach to women,” Beckford told Financial Advisor. “The traditional way of speaking to women from across the table isn’t working.”