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.

Women’s life expectancy in particular, and the fact that women outlive men by five years in general, presents advisors with a huge planning opportunity, Eckert said.

“Simply put we’re going to live longer than our male counterparts. If we earn less and live longer, it contributes to a bigger retirement gap,” she noted.

Women who turned 65 this past April have a life expectancy of 86.7 years

“We find that some 50% of women underestimated how long they’ll live by five years,” Eckert said. 

Longevity along with earnings and retirement gaps will lead to higher health care expenses, which make the services that advisors offer that much more critical to women who want to optimize their retirement success, she added.

That’s highlighted in the area of Social Security and healthcare planning and the need for calculate customized cost projections and illustrations to show women the financial choices they make and the dramatic impact it can have on their retirement.

For an average 65-year old who started receiving Social Security payments at age 65, healthcare expenses will consume some 68% of their benefits, she added.

Only 6% of women could identify the factors that determine Social Security benefits, said Eckert, who said that a tool that Nationwide developed--the Social Security 360 Analyzer--can help advisors and their clients clearly see and evaluate all the variables and choices available to them.

Meanwhile, for an average 65-year old who started receiving Social Security payments at age 65, healthcare expenses will consume some 68% of their benefits, she added.

Some 75% of women list health care costs going out of control as a top fear in retirement. It’s a well-founded concern. Out of pocket costs for a 65-year old couple could reach between $270,000 to $325,000. That’s a huge opening for advisors to

“We did a presentation recently for a woman who was deciding whether to retire in Denver or Southern California, and we showed her there was a $60,000 health care cost differential” in her choice, Eckert said.

“Some 84% of people underestimate what healthcare will cost. In addition, 76% of women we surveyed said they wished they understood Medicare better. This creates a perfect storm to insert yourself,” Eckert said.

It can also be invaluable for advisors to arm women clients going through divorce with projections about how much their healthcare will cost in retirement, possibly adding a quarter of a million of dollars or more to a divorce package, she added.