Boston-based MFS Investment has expanded its marketing push for women clients to include Latin America after having previous expanded into Europe.
Firms have been picking up their efforts to attract more women investors because they represent an untapped market. Women are accumulating more wealth, and many are inheriting wealth from previous generations. Finally, a growing number of women are making as much if not more than their spouses, according to Jenine Garrelick, senior managing director at MFS Investment Management.
Recently, the firm began a seminar series aimed at several Latin American countries. This comes two years after it expanded its message into Europe, including Italy, Spain, Switzerland and the U.K.
In the seminars, the firm offers tools and resources to advisors to market to women. It also encourages them to host client events for women. Women tend to bring their friends, which means there is opportunity for the advisor to also pick up referral business, Garrelick said.
“The greatest thing about marketing to women [is] they are great referral sources,” she said.
The firm encourages advisors to host such events and talk to women about the topics they care about, such as cybersecurity and, for U.S. audiences, when to claim Social Security benefits. The content also includes information about caregiving and Medicare.
“We conduct an annual educational campaign among our internal wholesale team on Social Security to help them better serve both their regional wholesale partners and advisors throughout the U.S.,” the firm said in a statement.
More than 25 years ago, MFS launched MFS Heritage Planning, which is a tool for advisors to help them better communicate with women, according to Garrelick. The tool provides resources such as a women-focused checklist.
“It is a comprehensive program that helps financial advisors be able to connect to their clients and allows them to understand that they do more than just look at portfolios and money,” Garrelick said.
Men and women deal with money in a different way and advisors must learn how to address the concerns that are pertinent to women, according to Garrelick. For instance, men tend to look at money in terms of how much of it they can accumulate, she said.
“For women, that’s not what they look at buckets of money as,” she said. “They look at those buckets of money in the eyes of … what is this wealth doing?”
Garrelick said a significant reason for the disconnect between the financial services industry and women is a lack of women in the financial advisory field.
“You tend to communicate with people similar to yourself and you connect with people similar to yourself, so that’s a fact of life,” she said. “When you have an industry where a majority of the financial advisors and financial planners out there are men, it then leads to the fact that women get overlooked in those relationships.”
But she added that there are things all advisors can do to improve communications with women, she said.
A warm and inviting office that is child-friendly can go a long way in making some women and families feel more comfortable, she said. Advisors should also use their website to tell their story about why they are in the business and focus on the needs of both men and women, according to Garrelick.
“I think we need to have more women financial advisors not just because a lot of women want to connect with someone,” Garrelick said. “The other reason we need more women financial advisors is because it’s a great profession that women can excel at.”