Women Investors Want More From Advisors

A new survey by Boston Consulting Group reports that although women’s cut of global wealth is growing, the service they get from financial advisors is not equal to that offered to men.

Fifty-five percent of the women surveyed said there is need for improvement in their relationships with wealth managers, with 24 percent of that segment reporting a “significant” need for improvement. Few respondents had problems with the products that firms were offering; the service model was the bigger issue.

Advisors might want to pay better attention to their women clients, as their pockets are growing deeper. Women in the United States and Canada controlled 33 percent of wealth in 2009, or about $9 trillion; estimates are that it will grow to $11.7 trillion by 2014. Reasons include a growing presence of women in the workforce, their greater involvement in managing family finances, and the greater incidence of inherited wealth owing to women’s longevity.

Some financial advisors go awry with the assumption that women don’t understand investing or markets. There is empirical data that show women are more risk-averse. Boston Consulting Group reported that more than 70 percent of the women surveyed favored balanced or conservative investment strategies (for women older than 50, the percentage is nearly 95 percent.) On the other hand, women are more willing than men to admit when they don’t understand something about a security or an investment plan, and they’re interested in knowing more about the subject. The more they learn, the more willing they are to take related risks. By comparison, men tend to assume they possess more knowledge about investing than they actually have, and they become more risk-averse as they learn more, she adds.

The financial lives of women investors also are more likely to be rearranged by such changes as divorce, the birth of a child, or the death of a spouse than the financial lives men are. Women live longer, tend to earn less over their lifetimes, and often are caregivers to both children and aging parents, which takes a toll on their ability to generate income. So women are more likely to look at investments from a long-term perspective, more holistically.

As discontent women investors are with the counsel they’re receiving the survey found 85 percent of women surveyed were indifferent to the gender of their advisors. The sentiment in the survey was that personality, experience and qualifications mattered more.