“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.