Raymond James Financial CEO Paul Reilly says his firm is working hard to attract more women advisors, including to its executive ranks.

Today, RJF's Private Client Group in the United States and Canada has more than 850 women advisors, or more than 13 percent of its total 6,500 financial advisors.

At a press briefing at the firm's 21st Annual Women's Symposium, Reilly said RJF has a number of initiatives aimed at increasing that percentage. One program includes training women who start as sales assistants to become financial advisors. He estimated roughly 30 percent of women attending the conference had become advisors through the program.

The company, based in St. Petersburg, Fla., also has been working to find more female executives by considering and promoting women internally as well as by searching externally. Reilly says he believes RJF has done a good job of promoting women, but acknowledged difficulties in finding a higher percentage of women executive candidates.

"A lot of good women are out there ... but we've done searches where there were no women on the slate, and we've turned it back to make sure we could get women on the slate," he said.

The company also is supporting financial literacy courses in schools in an effort to increase the number of women interested in financial services careers, particularly among women in less affluent communities.

RJF also is getting input from its female advisors on how to attract and keep more women advisors and, for example, changed its maternity policy as a result, he said. "We are trying to listen, to say what more can we do to help foster more women in careers here," Reilly said.

He noted increasing the number of women advisors is an important issue, especially because the firm's own studies, as well as others, show that women will be controlling family finances even more so in the future. The goal, he said, should be for 50 percent of advisors to be female.

Many other financial services companies also have been stressing the need for more women financial advisors, but their percentage of the industry hasn't budged much, if at all. The CFP Board, for example, notes the percentage of female CFP licensees has remained flat at 23 percent for at least a decade.

Reilly said over the next five years, the biggest challenge for the financial advisory industry will be training the next generation of advisors and making sure enough people are capable of being in the role. The second biggest challenge will be to make sure advisors have the technology that allows them to provide the best service to clients, he added. Robo-advisors are a tool and won't replace advisors, but technology constantly needs to be upgraded for advisors to use effectively, he said.

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