Younger Women Want to Talk About More Than Money With Advisors: Wells Fargo

Meanwhile, 20% of female respondents said they were following social media financial influencers, while 13% said they subscribed to a financial podcast.

Noting that her grandmother used to say, "Don't talk about money, politics or religion," she said: "On two of them she was right. But we have to demystify this concept of talking about money in families. And that's something as an industry that we have to get better at."

During the Q&A, ThinkAdvisor asked if the female respondents indicated if they felt more comfortable dealing with female financial advisors. Hunt-Ruddy replied that Wells Fargo didn't break out that data. But she said: "We certainly understand that we need to be working on the population of advisors being more reflective of the communities that we live in."

Although more than half of the U.S. population is female and women control one-third of household assets (more than $10 trillion), "only 18.1% of financial advisors are women," Natalia Tchetchoulina, partner and client advisor at Cerity Partners, recently said, citing Cerulli data.

Other Findings

"Younger women are taking charge of their finances" now, according to Veronica Willis, investment strategy analyst at Wells Fargo Investment Institute. Almost one-third of millennial and Gen X women reported being the "primary breadwinner," she told reporters, noting that was 1.5 times higher than the 20% of baby boomer and traditionalist-generation women.

Meanwhile, more than half of Gen X and millennial women reported they led their household finances versus 40% of women from the older two generations.

The pandemic, however, "had a disproportionate impact on women," Willis said, noting women accounted for more than 50% of the employment in industries that provide discretionary services and almost 1 million more women lost jobs than men. And women 25 to 54 left the labor force at almost twice the rate of men, she said.

"Despite these headwinds over the last year, we learned in the survey that 54% of all partnered women reported greater or equal earnings to their spouse."

Millennial women, meanwhile, are investing more, while "baby boomers are a little bit more cautious," she said. Women have tended to invest more conservatively than men, but "it's crucial to take the right amount of risk" when investing, especially when you are young and investing for retirement, she said. So it may be a good sign that younger women seem to be taking a little more investment risk now, she said.

Women are increasingly investing more based on their values and are also giving more to charity, she went on to say, noting that environmental, social and governance focused investing is becoming increasingly popular. In a 2020 Wells Fargo study, 78% of women said they would include ESG investments in their 401(k) plans if their employers offered them, she said.

The Importance of a Financial Plan

About 67% of women reported they had financial plans and nearly all of those respondents said it "really helped them weather recent uncertainty, put them more at ease with their financial future and gave them confidence that they could achieve their goals," according to Nancy Amick, senior family dynamics consultant, Advice Center at Wells Fargo Wealth & Investment Management.

(Pictured: Beth Renner, head of Advice Center, Wells Fargo Wealth & Investment Management)