(Bloomberg) — The burden of the retirement savings shortfall in the U.S. will weigh heavily on women, according to Sallie Krawcheck, a former executive at Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc.
"It is, in particular, a women's crisis," she said Tuesday at the American Council of Life Insurers conference in Chicago. "It's a gender crisis."
Females tend to have lower earnings and also longer lifespans, Krawcheck said. She urged the financial industry to focus more on helping Americans lower the gap between assets and post-retirement needs, a figure she put at $13 trillion and called "so big and so ugly."
Employers can help alleviate that shortfall by working to counter the gender-pay gap and educating women on investing opportunities, Krawcheck said. For financial firms, women and millennials represent two of the largest opportunities for growth, she said, but increasing business with those groups means building relationships.
