According to a survey of U.S. women sponsored by Philadelphia-based roboadvisor WorthFM, most women feel underserved by the financial services industry and are wary of trusting Wall Street.

“Even women who are really successful in their careers and who have advanced degrees feel completely outside of the traditional financial services in that they don’t really understand what they’re investing in,” says Amanda Steinberg, WorthFM CEO. “They feel like advisors are using financial plans to mask advice that is really just a means to sell products and to boost their AUM.”

WorthFM found that 76 percent of women believe that Wall Street does not have consumers’ best interests at heart.

The crisis of trust and confidence could have direct repercussions for financial firms: 84 percent of the respondents say they already are or expect to be solely responsible for managing their finances, and 89 percent said they are already involved in their household’s investment decisions in some capacity.

“The gender bifurcation of financial management in households is dissolving,” Steinberg says. “Women might not have the confidence yet, but they’re interested in learning about investing and finance. When they go to a traditional planner, they feel like they’re being interviewed and scrutinized to see if they’re worth talking to, and it leaves a bad taste in their mouth.”

The survey’s respondents felt disconnected from financial advisors, with 91 percent reporting that material from financial companies are more about selling them products than educating them about investing.

To some extent, that’s keeping women, even the enterprising millennials, on the sidelines of investing. Forty-four percent of the respondents, and more than half of the millennials surveyed, said they weren’t actively involved in investing outside of their 401(k) plans.

“We have to understand that most young people are skittish about the market, especially young women,” Steinberg says. “WorthFM focuses first on their emergency fund because we think that’s the most important thing we can do first; cash is the greatest protector against almost everything. We’re not pushing them into IRAs or investment accounts. We feel like the industry would gain more trust if we focused more on their short-term liquidity instead of their long-term asset growth.”

Women feel like their lack of financial knowledge as a barrier to investing, according to WorthFM. Nearly half of the respondents, 48 percent, don’t think they’re knowledgeable about investing, and 63 percent find investing confusing.

Steinberg said the goals-based planning paradigm is part of the problem.

“It’s very logical and it makes sense, set a goal and then work towards it, but most women don’t view their finances in such a linear way,” Steinberg says. “Most women aren’t setting goals, they don’t connect to this kind of planning. Life for them is non-linear, there are more variables that come up.”

Most of the survey’s respondents, 77 percent, gave the financial services industry a grade of "C" or below for the effort they make to explain saving and investing to consumers, and 87 percent felt that financial jargon makes investing seem more confusing than it should be.

“They’re not meeting her where she is, they’re trying to bring her into them by repackaging and re-explaining the same financial concepts,” Steinberg says. “The industry is so jargon heavy and linear in its thinking. Goals-based planning is setting women up to fail, and we need to set them up to succeed.”

Only 10 percent of the women surveyed believed that Wall Street pays equal attention to men and women. At the same time, 70 percent of the respondents believed that there should be financial services and products geared towards women.

As a result, women may look to roboadvisors to access investment and financial advice, suggests Steinberg. According to the survey, most women already pay bills, 81 percent, shop, 81 percent, and bank, 76 percent, online — but currently, less than one-in-five say they invest online.

“The mass affluent audience with $10,000 or $100,000 in assets don’t have the luxury of paying an asset-based fee for advice,” Steinberg says. “Advisors’ revenue typically comes from asset gathering, but accumulating assets doesn’t really address many women’s concerns. They need help with things like cash-flow management, building an emergency fund, tax planning, but they feel like they’re in a total void.”

WorthFM, a digital advice provider designed to engage and educate women online, polled 1,501 women at least 18 years of age from December 17-27 for its study.