Meet the Winners of the Excell Women in Wealth Management Awards

Barriers to Success

Although women comprise more than half of the U.S. population, less than a quarter of financial advisors are women, a figure that has remained largely flat for the last 10 years, according to the CFP Board.

Carson Group's report found that female advisors confront many of the same challenges as their male counterparts: growing a book of business, operational efficiency and dealing with clients' emotional responses to the market.

However, 88% of survey respondents said women face additional barriers that men are less likely to have to deal with:

• Balancing professional role with caregiving obligations: 73%
• Difficulties finding a firm that is a culture fit: 70%
• Difficulty finding a mentor: 57%
• Challenges in prospecting for new clients: 34%
• Other: 25%

Forty-seven percent of "other" write-in responses indicated that gender-based discrimination in the workplace remains a significant barrier for success in the wealth management industry.

The report's findings were based on a survey of 335 financial advice professionals, 78.6% female and 21.4% male.

"We focus much of our energy on the recruitment of women, which is important too," Julie Ragatz, vice president for next gen and advisor development programs at Carson Group, said in a statement. "But none of these barriers keep women out of the industry. They keep them from staying."

Only 13% of female advisors in the survey believed that clients rarely take gender into account when selecting a financial advisor, compared with 26% of male advisors. This has a direct effect on a woman's ability to grow her book of business, Carson Group said.

In addition, 54% of female respondents strongly disagreed or disagreed with the statement that financial advisors rarely take gender into account when seeking partners for joint work.

They said that in their experience, gender indeed plays a negative role in receiving offers for joint work from other advisors, hindering long-term advancement.