More Than Math
Mohrman-Gillis and Blayney think the industry would attract more women if it dispelled the common misperception that it’s mainly about math and publicized the importance of strong communication and relationship skills. “We’re not all walking quants,” says Blayney, who majored in English in college.
Michelle Lynch, director of the Raymond James Network for Women Advisors, agrees it’s time to clear up the misperception that a financial advisor has to be a math whiz. “It’s really about relationships,” she says, noting that research analysts and dedicated experts often handle much of the number crunching.
Lynch has no doubt the financial planning industry needs more female advisors. “We talk a lot about the client of the future, and that’ll most likely be a woman,” she says. “Women are out-earning men, out-graduating men and outliving men.”
The Network for Women Advisors has a twofold mission, she says. First is to support and retain Raymond James’s more than 900 existing female advisors. Second is to recruit. This includes recruiting experienced advisors from other firms and recruiting women into the industry from other professions. Lynch has seen a lot of successful second-career advisors, including former teachers, attorneys and engineers. The flexibility to work remotely and set one’s hours is also attractive to working mothers, she says.
To support and retain advisors, the network runs three separate, yearlong coaching programs, says Lynch. It also offers training on practice management topics, regional networking opportunities and workshops, and an annual women’s symposium.
Last fall, the network sent women advisors to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s AgeLab to learn more about the financial impact of aging. One topic discussed was what to do when older clients are hospitalized. “Sometimes the first person they call is their advisor,” says Lynch.
Two years ago, the network launched its yearlong Registered Associate Mentoring Program (RAMP), which trains and encourages registered sales associates to explore careers as financial advisors. About 30% of Raymond James’s female advisors began as sales associates. Men may apply to RAMP but haven’t so far, says Lynch. RAMP attendees who decide to become advisors transition to the firm’s Advisor Mastery Program.
In December, network members launched a donor-advised fund, the Women’s Giving Circle, to provide financial support to women who wish to become advisors but lack the means. The network and several of its members also sponsor financial literacy programs in schools to raise awareness in communities.
Embracing Diversity
Recognizing that more women will control assets is one thing; understanding how to work with them is another. “We try to educate our advisors that all women are not the same,” says Kate Healy, managing director of marketing for TD Ameritrade Institutional and the head of its Women’s Leadership Initiative. Widows, professional women and stay-at-home moms in charge of household finances may differ in how, when and if they wish to meet, she says.
The Women’s Leadership Initiative also helps firms figure out how to find talent. “Advisors will say, ‘You’ve sold me on why I want to add a woman or diverse candidate—where do I find them?’” Healy says. The initiative’s guidebooks explain how to start internship programs, provide training and convert interns to employees. “We can’t forget about them once we get them in the industry.”
Healy says women account for half the participants in TD Ameritrade’s RIA NextGen programs, which include a career exchange job-posting website, a LinkedIn community, webcasts and conferences.
TD Ameritrade Institutional’s conferences usually hold networking components for women on the first night. Participants are also welcome to “cross-pollinate,” she says, meaning bring a friend or someone they think would be good in the industry.
Katia Friend, a managing director at BNY Mellon Wealth Management, is serious about adding more diverse candidates to the team of 25 wealth directors (which now includes seven women) that she leads in the New York tristate area. “We want to have the right team in place to reflect the diversity of clients,” she says. Her team views this diversity mainly as a reflection of how clients came into wealth—either creating or inheriting it.
Friend’s recruiting team uses an online tool to assess the traits of all candidates, including their temperament, abstract reasoning and empathy. The candidates’ strengths and the areas in which they need improvement are incorporated into one-on-one coaching that all advisors receive their first year. “This sends a signal to everyone that this isn’t a women’s issue, it’s a business issue,” she says. Separately, BNY Mellon’s coaching university raises awareness and sensitivity to challenges all clients may grapple with, she adds.
Lazetta Rainey Braxton, founder and CEO of Financial Fountains LLC, a fee-only financial planning firm based in Baltimore, is passionate about bringing more women and people of color to the financial planning profession. “As a female of color, I am intentional with those aspects of my identity and take very seriously creating opportunities to invite others,” she says.
In addition to working on many initiatives—she is a member of the CFP Board’s Women’s Initiative Advisory Panel, a member and former chair of the Financial Planning Association Diversity Committee and president of the Association of African American Financial Advisors—she does pro bono work to improve financial literacy in underserved and underrepresented communities.
“We need to nurture the pipeline of women leaders within the profession so we have representation among the industry and impact in the community we serve,” says Braxton. But to really effect change, she says, the gatekeepers of the industry must embrace it, too.
“There needs to be the acknowledgement and acceptance that women and people of color are beyond capable of serving in leadership capacities,” she says. “We are proven, have credentials, experience and strong work ethics.”
Janice Cackowski, a financial planner with Ohio-based RIA firm Strategic Wealth Partners and a host of the FPA’s Women and Finance Knowledge Circle, has spent the last six years promoting, through her FPA chapter, the importance of getting more women involved in the industry. Cackowski—a paralegal in a divorce-planning law firm before becoming an advisor at almost 40—hung out a shingle and then worked for a small RIA firm before joining Strategic Wealth Partners as a servicing advisor.
As the firm’s first female advisor, working with advisors 12 to 15 years her junior, “I felt like this mother hen going in there,” she says. But her ability to build relationships quickly became obvious, and she says the firm hasn’t lost any widowed clients during the two years she’s been there. She has also built a niche in “suddenly single clients” who are mostly (but not exclusively) female.
Cackowski says the Knowledge Circle’s monthly phone calls, launched in 2015, tend to attract 80 to 90 participants. The calls have mostly focused on business issues, such as how to find clients and how to find and focus on a target market. “We’ve had some good conversations,” she says. “We’ve just touched the tip of the iceberg.”
The Knowledge Circle is looking for high schools and community colleges interested in having members teach women about financial literacy basics and the industry—“what it feels like, what it looks like, what you need to get there, and what you need to study,” says Cackowski.
Lynch of Raymond James sums up the general sentiment about the shortage of women advisors. “It’s an industry problem,” she says, “and we all have to band together.”