Financial advisors cannot afford to ignore the fact that the greatest amount of wealth in the U.S. is generated today by women. Many advisors already understand that if they are to effectively tap into the enormous market potential that women represent, they need to stop thinking of women as one monolithic group, and approach them in a more nuanced manner.
But advisors who really want to attract women and retain them as clients need to nuance that dialogue even further. Women do think differently from men when it comes to their finances, says Andrea Turner Moffitt, senior VP at the Center for Talent Innovation (CTI) and managing director at Hewlett Consulting Partners.
It's important for advisors to take those differences into account, she says, but beyond that, there's much more to understanding women and effectively serving them, not least because 58% of female wealth in the U.S. is not managed by a financial advisor.
"The [financial advisory] industry has had an increasing awareness of the importance of women for over a decade and there have been some great initial investments, but we need to move beyond those. What's required is a mindset shift," Turner Moffitt says.
In her new book, "Harness the Power of the Purse: Winning Women Investors," Turner Moffitt outlines a six-step roadmap for advisors who want to make that mindset shift. The book details key investment decision-making factors – women's confidence, acumen, investment goals and risk appetite among them – and unpacks the behaviors that individual advisors and wealth management leaders need to invoke to win women's trust and loyalty as investors.
Turner Moffitt is the founder of Wealthrive, Inc., a start-up platform designed to inspire and empower women to be confident investors.
In her new book, she highlights the unconscious biases that many in the financial services industry continue to exhibit and the resulting costs in terms of missed market opportunities. Many advisors still limit the conversation to the basic issue of financial security, which is, of course, as important to women as it is to anyone else. Turner Moffitt says, however, that "women have a desire for much more, so the conversation needs to go way beyond that default, linear conversation that's centered around financial security and retirement planning."
