There is an urgency facing the financial services industry and it has everything to do with women.

For one, there is a lack of female financial advisors. Females represent only 15% to 20% of all advisors, according to Barron’s. But beyond issues of equality, companies are losing out on the enormous wealth that women control, according to a white paper by financial services industry marketers Paulette Filion and Judy Paradi of Toronto-based Strategy Marketing.

Their paper, which is titled "Why there are so few female financial advisors: and what needs to happen to grow the numbers," is based on research and interviews with female financial advisors.

Filion and Paradi state that ignoring women costs the financial industry $700 billion a year. In addition, women are set to control $93 trillion in wealth globally and almost 40% of all wealth in North America by 2023.

Citing research from Boston College’s Center on Wealth and Philanthropy, the white paper noted that over the next 40 years there will be an unsurpassed wealth transfer of more than $59 trillion, and women will inherit 70% of those assets.

More wealth in the hands of women creates an opportunity for the financial community—and for female advisors. According to the white paper, research shows that female financial advisors have the skills to both acquire and foster long-term relationships with female investors.

And a survey of wealthy women in Boston Consulting Group's recent report, “Managing the Next Decade of Women’s Wealth,” found this cohort was 1.7 times more likely to believe that a financial institution had their best interest at heart when their relationship manager was a woman.

Filion and Paradi noted that the female financial advisors they interviewed spoke of the importance of strong relationships in building their practices. “They gave their natural ability to connect with people and build relationships as the number one reason for their success. However, they also told us these skills were dismissed as impractical rather celebrated as strengths among their peers.”

In that vein, the white paper pointed out that existing deep-rooted biases against women advisors causes them to face unique challenges not experienced by their male colleagues. 

“Branch managers who recruit continue to look for people who exhibit ‘typically’ male characteristics: demonstrable confidence and competitiveness with a singular focus on results, usually monetary. But those traits do not align with how women think and behave,” the white paper noted.

It added that despite internal programs and resources aimed at helping branch managers to hire more women, they continue to adhere to outdated hiring practices that don't support women in establishing successful practices, and instead lean toward male-focused metrics for what success looks like.

The white paper posited that branches and branch managers are pivotal to growing and retaining more female financial advisors. But they need help in finding more women, eliminating biases in their branch and providing more personalized support to the women they hire. And none of that can happen without support at the corporate level.

The white paper stated that corporate management must understand what is most needed on the front lines and how to provide the proper training to help branch managers deliver on the corporate mandate of hiring and retaining more female advisors. “They ought to be encouraged to expand their horizons to include all kinds of women—young, second career, older—and, especially, to consider women already working within the industry who are eager to become financial advisors and willing to do the hard work,” the white paper said.

The paper’s authors also pointed out that with more than one-third of advisors expected to retire over the next 10 years, there is an opportunity for female advisors to buy into the industry. Branch managers can help facilitate this by partnering women advisors with a retiring advisor’s practice and/or help them buy the practice.

Women own a greater share of the world's wealth, and Filion and Paradi said now is the time for the financial advisor industry to take advantage of that trend by expanding its base of female advisors.

“Organizations that fail to pay attention and don’t start making changes today are going to lose out to those who do," they said. "The window of opportunity is here now.”