Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
Despite all the progress made in gender equality, it’s still a man’s world. And when it comes to investments, economic growth, and entrepreneurship, women remain structurally excluded from high-level participation compared to men.
Industries and businesses have failed to create marketing strategies, products, and services that legitimately speak to women’s needs, not just what men think are women’s needs.
The Harvard Business Review recently estimated that women, as a demographic, are a market worth more than the Indian and Chinese markets combined. Women’s average consumption and expenditure rates are an excellent source for business markets to draw inspiration. However, the financial advisory profession is still in slumber. The diversity in nature, interests, and needs of women is misunderstood. As a result, women earn an average score in client experience and even worse, a failing score in advisor experience.
Another consequence of an unsatisfactory advisor experience is the lack of trust in the male-dominated industry of finance. Female advisors who are innovators but experience discrimination and dissatisfaction in their employer firms often resort to leaving in favor of setting up their own independent firms. Similarly, female investors often feel safer relying on female-run businesses and female advisors instead of seeking out male-dominated support systems.
This segmentation calls on financial advisors to look into the causes and effects of unaddressed needs and expectations for the women in their target audience. Why are financial planners failing women investors? Why does only one in three women ever trust or consult a financial advisor, often only when forced by her circumstances?
More broadly, what’s wrong with male-dominated firm policies when you look at them from a woman’s perspective?
We found the answer in three broad categories. Here’s what you should know:
Category 1: The service you build
A major trap advisory firms get caught in is their obsession with the stereotypical femininity of what women supposedly want versus focusing on the motivation of why their female clients are seeking a financial advisor in the first place. The service you’re building needs to address what women can expect from it, outside of whether “it’s made for women.”
If the service is for female executives, is your offering creating confidence, convenience, and community? As an advisor to women who have been divorced, is your offering delivering the analysis, coaching and planning that gets them to the next stage of life?
Avoid the blunder of tying your service model together with a big pink bow. A service for women with the same baseline features and intent as those meant for men does not hit the mark.
Clarity and sensibility in delivering services purposely “made for women” starts by understanding the needs and motivations of the women seeking help. Lifetime events shape their money journey and in turn affect the type of advisor and service that will be a good fit.
Avoid exploiting women’s wallets, especially when wage gaps are still awkwardly unbridged. Price fluctuations might not seem like a big deal if you look at individual products, but they contribute to an overwhelming inequality when you look at the bigger picture.
Category 2: The client experience
Even though women are increasingly the primary breadwinners and often manage the family budget, giving them a substantial power over consumer spending, they still find that their demands are not being met by financial service providers.
What do women want from a client experience? Whether or not they have careers or families, and regardless of their relationship status, women are still bearing the brunt of juggling work, family and home. Therefore, they need an experience that provides practical, quick and precise services that they can integrate into their lifestyle from an advisor who understands their unique profile and can offer an authentic relationship. For some clients, the gender of the advisor is an important factor; for others it’s the typical feminine qualities that most women seek.
The financial services industry has a lot to reconsider in its offerings to women. Do their services allow women to navigate their work-life balance easily? Is their model targeting their demographic, and does it take their clients seriously? Does the firm give women a safe space to explore their investment options through authentic conversations? Do they feel a valued client?
Category 3: Marketing services
Mainstream marketing is notoriously guilty of poor, stereotypical and gender-insensitive strategies. Regardless of whether the service is meant for women or has a more widespread audience, marketing tends to be too superfluous, generalizing, or disrespectful to trust and intelligence.
Women want their needs met by financial services, just like men are. While marketing is all about appealing to logic and emotions, firms hardly notice the long-term impact their marketing has on female consumers.
The firms who value customer satisfaction know the importance of providing a service that will match the client’s expectations and build a marketing strategy to reflect this service.
Showing women only in relation to men, or inadvertently resorting to sexism is a pitfall that fails to address the needs of women. Build scenarios that target the specific demographic that you have chosen to structure your service around and communicate the value through authentic channels that build value and trust.
Conclusion
Women have an important role to play in how financial advisors view client satisfaction. Companies that are conscious of the expanding female economy and provide a tailored service that seeks to understand their female client’s specific needs will succeed in the marketplace. Financial advisory firms that focus on providing innovative services alongside training advisors in listening skills, empathy and personal delivery will be more successful in addressing women’s preferences.
Bridget Grimes and Katie Burke co-founded Equita Financial Network out of a need to fuel business success while empowering other women in the financial services industry. Equita became the first platform solely focused on women-led financial planning firms, designed to encourage women to make the leap into launching their own practice and provide solutions to support them every step of the way. And importantly, Equita is a way for like-minded women to not only share resources and run their business at an affordable cost, but to also share ideas on everything from best practices to help with questions regarding client issues.
Read more articles by Bridget Grimes, Katie Burke
Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
