The Future of Finance is Female
blah blah blah
[Music]
[Applause]
in 1870 victoria woodhull was the first
female stockbroker on wall street fun
fact she was also the first woman to run
for the president of the united states
in the 151 years since then we still
haven’t had a female president of the
united states and female advisors
represent only 18 percent of all
advisors
now
i haven’t decided to run for president
yet but i do have decades of experience
as an advisor and leader in wealth
management
this probably won’t shock any of you but
women and men don’t have the same
investing habits women typically
reinvest as much as 90 percent of their
wealth back into their families and
communities that number for men is only
35 percent
when women are economically and
financially empowered
they don’t just buy fast cars and golf
memberships or charter their own rockets
to outer space no
they actually invest in education health
and well-being for their families
as an advisor for nearly 30 years i’ve
seen these differences with my own eyes
our mail clients always wanted to make
sure they were out performing some
benchmark whether it was the s p 500 the
dow jones or even their next door
neighbor
they were very fixated on a monetary
goal
our female clients were more focused on
making sure their money would be
sufficient to meet longer term life
goals
like taking care of their children their
aging parents
perhaps starting a business
the money was never the end goal it was
simply a means to the end
women are projected to control nearly
110 trillion dollars in global wealth by
the year 2025
seem a bit high to you
think about it in this country alone
women have longer life expectancies than
men we have unfortunately a very high
rate of divorce
and then there’s a great wealth transfer
when baby boomers will pass on and women
stand to inherit a lot of those assets
think about it if they invest 90 percent
of that wealth back into their families
and communities
that’s a whole lot of trillions going to
education health and well-being
if all of this talk about trillions
sounds like monopoly money to you
don’t get so caught up in the trillions
instead focus on the concept that women
use their wealth to make life better for
all
so if financial empowerment for women is
indeed better for all of us
how should an industry like wealth
management evolve to meet their needs
there are two groups of women to
consider
women investors
and women who work in this industry
first let’s talk about women investors
when i say the word investment
what images come to mind
probably stocks bonds the bull and the
bear
wall street
crazy hyper competitive environments
fast talking brokers
now think about most of the women in
your life
are they drawn to these images
or do they run for the hill screaming
now let’s look at women in the industry
as i mentioned only 18 percent of
financial advisors are female
but can you blame them
typical female professions like teaching
and nursing involve empathy compassion
educating nurturing
a lot of traits that we naturally
attribute to women
but were these the words you thought of
when i said investment just a few
minutes ago
probably not
the investment firm tia cref
did a study a few years ago that showed
that
two-thirds of women investors don’t
trust our industry
they don’t feel that the investing world
was built for someone like them
when i was an advisor speaking to
recently widowed clients
do you think they wanted to talk about
the s p 500 at that first meeting
do you think they wanted to hear about
the latest hot stock that would make
them wealthy overnight no
they wanted someone to listen to their
fears
they wanted someone who was patient with
them as they were processing their grief
i spoke to women going through a painful
divorce
and the only advisor they knew was
someone who constantly looked at their
husband during meetings but never at
them
and i can’t tell you the number of times
when i was in a meeting with a male
advisor a colleague of mine who was real
intent on showing that client
just how knowledgeable he was about the
financial markets
the goal for that meeting was to make
sure she didn’t take her account
elsewhere now that her husband was no
longer in the picture
but you know what i couldn’t really
blame these colleagues of mine we all
worked in a system that rewarded that
behavior get the assets get the assets
and when the meeting was over
the woman would ask me questions like do
you think this is right for me
what advice would you give me anita if i
was your mother
they were desperate to trust someone
because this was their livelihood
so you might say it’s easy right let’s
just hire more women in the field to
work with these women investors
not so fast
that’s only part of the solution
after all of these years working in this
field
i began to ask myself
does the wealth management industry need
to simply evolve
or does it need a complete gut level
transformation
in other words if the client of the
future
is female
does the bull and bearer approach really
work anymore
now to be clear i’m not advocating a
pinkit and trinket approach in fact i’m
as guilty as anyone when it comes to
launching women’s initiatives
the problem is that women are not a
niche
i found that the advice a woman
entrepreneur needed was different from
what a widow or a divorcee or a female
corporate executive needed
but while their needs were different
the one thing they all had in common
was the need to be understood
be informed and be a partner in
financial decision making
i learned that the skill that resonated
most with them was not some rote
memorization of ratios and statistics
but the art of listening
i found that rather than holding the
meetings in a conference room with dark
wood and leather chairs and awards and
trophies on the wall
it was so much more effective having
meetings in coffee shops or over dinner
or even better at their home
it allowed us to better understand the
person
their aspirations and goals
rather than reducing them to this
month’s sales goal
the problem is
that these softer skills which we
attribute to being feminine like
relationship building and listening and
patience
aren’t always rewarded in this field
it’s a big shift for an industry that’s
been built on commissions and fees and
egos
where more is better but what would
happen
if leaders started rewarding quality
over quantity
what would happen if we focused on
educating the client rather than rushing
through a powerpoint presentation
and contrary to what many leaders at the
top believe and trust me i know of you
this approach does not have to come at
the cost of lower profitability think
about it if our approach results in a
stronger relationship with the client
that’s a higher client retention
perhaps additional wallet share may be
referrals
i discovered that the key to success
was in the human connection
strong human connections result in
trusting relationships and who’s better
at building trusting relationships than
women
the media loves to portray successful
advisors as the wolves of wall street
bernie madoff the fictional gordon gekko
because that’s sexy right
but what about real life
what about women like sally kroczek who
ran two global wealth management firms
and is now launching her own to help
women invest
what about melody hopson in our own
backyard of chicago president of aerial
investments
or carla harris a senior executive at
morgan stanley who also happens to be a
professional gospel singer on the side
these are some of the most successful
people in financial services right now
and while they do bring strong feminine
attributes to their work
i can assure you no one thinks they’re
soft
transforming our industry will not be
easy
because the soft skills
are some of the hardest for people to
develop and master
and yes the transformation must involve
the hiring and inclusion of more women
and people of color
when i’m out there encouraging young
women to consider this career path i
often hear
i’m not good at math and i’m not good at
sales
well i’ve got news for you neither am i
in fact i joke often that i’m one of the
few indians on this planet who isn’t
great at math
i’m living proof that financial advisors
do not have to look a certain part i
mean look at me
i’m a brown skinned female immigrant
from india
i couldn’t be further from the prototype
when i was in college and i decided at
some point that i wanted to become an
economics major
my advisor took one look at me with my
aquanet spiked hair
black lipstick black nail polish long
black trench coat
combat boots
and he suggested i go into fashion
design instead
well thank god i didn’t listen to him
i believe my success in this field came
about because i leveraged my uniqueness
i have never had a desire to be like
everyone else in the room
my relationship building skills
my compassion for people whether it was
my clients or my team
the fact that i made it okay to show
vulnerability as a leader in a very
male-dominated environment
all these things made me different
was i always rewarded for it
depends on how you define reward
sure i made a great living
but the real reward goes back to how i
began this presentation
what do women do with their wealth
they reinvest back into the community
right
well i’m now reinvesting back into my
community by developing and preparing
other women to be successful in this
field and helping firms to also meet
this moment in history because it’s an
important moment in history
why don’t we just call wealth management
what it really is
financial life management
we have to start by making sure the
front lines look as diverse as the
clients we serve but again
it doesn’t stop with hiring the right
people
we need a paradigm shift within the
industry itself that’s the only way
we’re going to change the system and the
culture
the people who currently hold the power
need to commit to this change
but it doesn’t have to be a zero-sum
game
everyone will be better off think about
it
diverse companies are 35 percent more
likely to perform better than
non-diverse companies we’ll be able to
attract and retain women employees if we
can describe the work we do as helping
others and not about meeting sales goals
and if we can show more gender diversity
in the field
it’s more likely that women investors
will become more trusting of our
industry everybody wins
so whether we call it wealth management
or financial life management or anita’s
rant
we know this system was built over the
course of a few hundred years with a
very traditional model
so we’re not going to change this
overnight
but whether we’re male or female
we each play a part in its inevitable
transformation
so let’s not wait another 150 years
i for one am not waiting another day
thank you
you