Today, only 22.5% per cent of Australian financial planners are female. We know we need more women on the finance frontlines, so how does our industry move to address this unbalance?
Adviser Mia Taylor, winner of the AFA rising star award 2017 and member of the Ladies Finance Club says, “The challenge is not just gender-related. As we all know, the entry point into financial advice itself has become more difficult based on the initial hurdles and increased compliance. It’s difficult to pinpoint a way to incentivise financial planning as a career option for women.”
Mia says her discussions with female peers in the industry have led her to hypothesise, “Women aren’t always aware that financial planning is a great career option. Perhaps there is an impression here that needs to be broken down, being that financial advice is based on sales, where in reality, it’s more about building relationships and this is where women thrive. Perhaps more needs to be done to educate women on the financial advice profession and the potential to create a thriving business and fulfilling career with work-life balance."
Women are earning more and making more financial decisions than ever before and it’s clear that the demand for female advisers growing
“I am often approached by practices seeking my recommendations for female advisers to meet the increasing demand of clients wanting to work with female advisers. Unfortunately, I have no one to refer them to. There just isn’t any women entering the financial advice space.”
And what about women seeking financial advice? Once upon a time, it was not uncommon for a female partner in a relationship to not turn up to meetings with their adviser and often entrust her male partner to manage their joint interests. This lack of attendance could have been seen as women having no interest in creating a secure and bright financial future. Do women still see their financial goals, needs and strengths as second priority?
Mia states that this is not the norm for her or her peers who have a majority female client base and see women taking the finance reins in their partnerships more often than males.
It’s clear that Australians are seeking the powerful combination of emotional intelligence and knowledge of female professional financial planners. It begs the question, how do we address the need for female financial advisers to be represented on the front lines and more accurately reflect the Australian population and its financial advice needs?
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Comments5
"I think the industry needs more people- Full Stop. With the constant regulatory reform, the biggest concern is retaining and attracting people to the industry."
John 08:56 on 12 Mar 21
"This is disappointing, however, not surprising. I'm proud to say that I'm an adviser at MiQ Private Wealth where the female numbers make up 50% of our advisers. We have a total of 9 female advisers ranging in age from 27 to 70! How unique are we??? "
Clare Sullivan 17:36 on 10 Mar 21
"I would like to see a gender breakdown based on age. For over 50 it does seem 90% male but for under 35 I would suggest it is closer to a 50/50 split"
Chris 15:46 on 10 Mar 21
"While I am in favour of a more balanced gender mix within Financial Advice, The Australian ran a very good article on a similar problem in Engineering which I think strikes at the heart of the problem here. In essence, this article pointed out that women are as equally capable at STEM (in the Engineering case) as men and in some areas are better. On this basis, one would think that women should therefore make up similar numbers with men in this profession. The explanation that is always put forward is as simple as the fact that this is very much a "blokey" work environment and not conducive to female participation and hence our need to change our ways to open this pathway up. When these same participants were interviewed about their favourite and least favourite subject, girls listed STEM subjects much lower than boys and is the first pointer (because we work at what we enjoy) as to why Engineering has become a male dominated industry, in Western/Developed society in particular. The research dug further to look at the percentage of females taking up Engineering in different countries around the world and in developing countries (India and Iran were up the top of this list), a much higher % of people studying Engineering at a Tertiary Level were women and the explanation here was that such a job was higher paying and provided a means to work abroad and not necessarily because saw this as their first preference for study. In Developed economies, girls/women were far more likely to study in areas that they found interesting (even if they paid poorly, such as drama etc) and the explanation given was that they would typically study at what appeal as the social conditions in which they lived meant that they could still live a decent life even if their job didn't pay well (unlike in developing nations). At the heart of it, we study and work at what we like and if Finance appeals more to men than women (by nature) then all of the pushing, subsidies and pathways in the world won't increase the number of female participants in this area."
Grant Enders 15:16 on 10 Mar 21
"Enough of the identity politics. We get it enough on #theirABC."
Chris 14:35 on 10 Mar 21