Are you ignoring your female clients? Are you sure?

How to tell if you are and what you can do about it

We’ve focused frequently in Your Thriving Practice on the importance of making sure that, as financial professionals, you pay as much attention to your female clients as you pay to your male clients.

We’ve looked at the alarming statistic that indicates that as many as 70% of recent widows leave their financial professionals shortly after their husbands’ death—a sign that they consider the producer to have been more concerned with their late spouse’s financial issues than with their own.

We’ve also looked at the growing financial assets held by women in America—$11 trillion now, and likely $30 trillion within seven years, given the upcoming transfer of wealth from baby boomers to younger generations.

"...as many as 70% of recent widows leave their financial professionals shortly after their husbands’ death..."

And we’ve looked at not only the statistical likelihood that women will outlive men, but also at the growing number of high-net-worth women who are choosing to remain single.

None of this information is new or surprising. What is troubling, however, is that the tendency to pay more attention to male clients than female clients remains pervasive.

Boston Consulting Group made a splash in 2009 with a comprehensive study that showed women were more dissatisfied with the financial services industry than any other, and that they felt their gender was the key factor in the disrespect that they had experienced.

But more recent studies show that the needle hasn’t moved much. For example, about 40% of female clients said they feel ignored by their financial professional, according to a 2020 survey. Another showed that women were three times as likely to report having a negative experience with a producer based on a gender stereotype.

What’s standing in the way of progress? As Kathleen Burns Kingsbury, a wealth psychology expert, author, and coach, puts it: “for many, this particular segment of the market is their blind spot.”

“It’s hard for most advisors to really see how their clients are perceiving them,” says Kingsbury. “It really takes a conscious effort to self-reflect.”

Be honest with yourself

How to do that? Jeannie Underwood-Kotner, head of Global Atlantic Consulting, suggests starting with a simple “T-chart” exercise, where you consider how well you know each member of a male/female pair of clients, asking yourself these five simple questions about their background and money goals:

• Where did they grow up?
• Where did they go to school?
• What do they do for a living?
• What do they do outside of work?
• What is their top money goal?

If you find that you know more about the male than the female member of the pair, that’s a wake-up call, says Underwood-Kotner. “It’s time to put a plan in place for how you are going to engage her more,” she says.

For a broader view of your practice, Underwood-Kotner suggests starting with five questions:

• How many female clients are in your practice?
• How well do you know the female spouse in your couple clients?
• In the past two years, how many female clients have you added?
• How many seminars have you hosted focusing on women?
• Do you communicate primarily with the man in the couple?

“Really take an inventory of your whole book of business,” she says. “Be brutally honest with yourself. You don’t have to share the answers with anybody.”

Kingsbury suggests that financial professionals do an audit of their website: Is the word “women” anywhere on it? Does it include photos of both men and women? On the staff bio page, is there a long line of photos of white males, or is there some diversity?

For a deeper dive, Kingsbury asks financial professionals to respond to a series of 20 true-false statements to determine their “female-friendly quotient.” For example: Is your practice generally equally weighted in terms of female versus male clients? When you meet with a couple, are you communicating mostly with the partner who speaks up the most, or are you checking in with both? When you develop a financial plan, are you incorporating your client’s family values, life goals and wishes for the next generation?

Kingsbury says that many female clients won’t speak up if they are unhappy with your service. So, it can be helpful to ask them if they are satisfied—ideally using a survey administered by a market research group or someone other than you.

One male financial professional whom Kingsbury coached actually put together an all-female advisory board made up of both existing and potential clients. They met several times over a period of two years to discuss various issues, including what they are looking for when they choose a financial professional, how they prefer to communicate with that person, and the kinds of information they want from that person.

“It’s important to ask thoughtful questions and then listen—really listen—to what women are telling you they want,” says Kingsbury.

Then what?

Listening and communicating better are the keys to improving your effectiveness in working with female clients, says Billie Christiansen, associate regional director at Russell Investments.

As an example of what not to do, she recalls her own recent experience, shortly after she and her husband married. Both already had their own individual financial professionals, but they sought out one to work with them as a couple. She thought their first meeting with their prospective joint advisor went well, she said, but when that producer addressed all the follow-up communications to her husband—and not her and her husband—he lost them.

“It’s important to ask thoughtful questions and then listen—really listen..."

“We had talked a lot to him about how excited we were about starting this financial journey together,” says Christiansen, who has worked in the financial industry for two decades. “But he didn’t seem to pick up on that.”

Christiansen suggests that, when working with a couple, producers should talk in-depth to each partner individually, to discover their highest personal priorities, as well as together, to develop a deeper understanding of their overlapping priorities as a family. Financial professionals should also follow up with each person on a regular basis, so they are up-to-date as circumstances change.

And, even if one partner seems more involved in the process than the other, both should continue to be invited to all meetings, encouraged to give input, and included on all communications.

“If you wait until the male voice is absent due to illness, death, or divorce to have those discovery conversations with the woman at the table, odds are the assets at stake are already gone,” says Christiansen.

Organizing some female-focused client events can be a great way to cement ties with existing female clients and attract new ones, says Chris Wedell, co-founder of StrongHer Money, an education platform to help women take control of their financial lives.

Rather than a jargon-filled seminar on a specific investment, she suggests making it an event that ties finance with other issues in women’s lives, such as health and wellness. Wedell has hosted events where attendees made overnight oats that they could eat for breakfast the next morning and bath bombs that they can enjoy days later—and remember the fun time they had with the group.

Wedell, who is also an advisor at Volare Wealth Advisors, says that in her experience, all-female meet-ups often result in helpful, free-flowing discussions that would be unlikely to happen at mixed-gender or all-male events.

Ultimately, says Wedell, the best women’s events are ones that are thoughtfully designed to present information that women need—not what you want to tell them.

Kotner-Underwood agrees.

“It’s about always looking for ways you can engage her, to show her you care about her concerns,” she says. “Over time, it adds up to a better relationship.”