The financial industry is at the bottom of the pile when it comes to accepting, promoting and serving women, said Sallie Krawcheck, founder of Ellevest, a New York-based digital investing platform for women.

More women advisors and clients are needed, yet “our industry has a long way to go,” Krawcheck said Tuesday. The industry “has to take a hard look at itself or people like me will start our own companies” to solve the diversity problem, she said.

“The financial industry must help advance and serve women and people of color if it wants to push this country to be a better place,” she said.

She made her remarks Tuesday at the Invest In Women conference sponsored by Financial Advisor and Private Wealth magazines. The conference is being held in Houston.

Krawcheck, who worked her way to the top of some of the biggest financial firms before throwing it all aside to start Ellevest, has gained a reputation as a strong and feisty advocate for women while blazing her own successful career in finance. She started as an equity analyst for Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. and moved up to research director, then to chairwoman and CEO of the sell-side research firm.

She then moved to Citigroup and subsequently Bank of America, where she was the chief of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management. She has amassed an impressive number of honors along the way, being named by Forbes as No. 7 on its list of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women in 2005. She is also the chairwoman of Ellevate Network (formerly 85 Broads Unlimited), an organization of female professionals that supports other businesswomen.
 
For most women, however, the financial industry has had a dismal performance on diversity issues. The gender pay gap is closing, but only very slowly, Krawcheck said. At the rate society is moving, it will take women 38 years to reach pay equity, black women will need 110 years and Hispanic women 180 years, she said.

And Krawcheck said the problem will not change until women attack it as a group. “We cannot do it as individuals. We have to do it together.”

The motivation to make those changes, once women unite and demand to be included, has to come from the CEOs and top leadership, she said. When she worked for the big-name firms, she said she tried to get the top management to embrace women and the different sensibilities and ideas they bring to the table. But her proposals fell on deaf ears, which is why she started her own firm.

“What we do at Ellevest is pretty simple. We ask women clients questions they can answer. We do not ask her how much risk she can tolerate, because she does not know. Neither does a man.”

The “Me Too” movement has brought national attention to both sexual harassment, the lower status that women occupy and their lack of power. But it goes back to money.

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