While women advisors may like to think they’re better at working with women investors than their male colleagues are, that’s not always the case, according to Roberta Eckert, Vice President of the Nationwide Retirement Institute.
Eye tracking technology shows when meeting heterosexual couples, financial advisors, regardless of gender, tend to focus on the male client 60% of the time.
“Women are intuitive. They pick up on that immediately. That’s why 70% of women will change advisors within one year of her husband’s death—doesn’t matter if the existing advisor is male or female,” Eckert said at the Invest in Women Conference sponsored by Financial Advisor magazine in Atlanta Wednesday.
While advisors want to present as competent, it is a better strategy for advisors to give women time to engage and ask as many questions as they want to ask and present women with at least two or more solutions.
“I know advisors want to present as competent, but it’s better to give women at least two options,” Eckert said.
Why would advisors want to focus on women clients? Women control $10.9 trillion in assets already and that’s expected to grow to $30 trillion by 2030. More than five million women have salaries of more than $100,000 and 50% of women are primary bread winners, Eckert said.
Some of women who 30% are affluent and married are already making the financial and investment decisions.
But a huge swath of women—some 46%--do not currently work with a financial advisor, Eckert said.
How can advisors change that? “Women have certain expectations for their financial professionals. Here’s what they’ve told us,” Eckert said. “They want to be treated as individuals, not a category.”
Women clients want an advisor who gets to know who they are and what it important to them. They want advisors who listen and ask questions.
“Avoid jargon, don’t assume you know what she needs and schedule extra time for questions,” Eckert recommended.
Only 17% of women are currently confident about their ability to retire and the pandemic made that confidence gap much worse for a number of reasons, she added. Not only did women lose or opt out of their jobs in droves due to industry disruption or caregiving needs, but it widened many womens pay and retirement gaps.