M. P.Dunleavey writre: \u00a0Imagine that you work for a financial company. You\u2019ve plowed through stacks of research showing that women \u2014 who are increasingly educated and affluent \u2014 could be a big source of revenue for you. Now what? \u00a0Do you paint the reception area a nice shade of coral? Put handbag hooks on the bathroom doors? Provide sensitivity training to your staff?<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re thinking that it can\u2019t be that hard to bring female customers in the door, let me bring you up to speed: Women control trillions of dollars of wealth in the United States, yet as clients, they pose a challenge to Wall Street\u2019s traditional way of doing business.<\/p>\n
Every year at its national conference, for example, TD Ameritrade offers a seminar for advisers on working with women as clients, and it\u2019s always jam-packed. \u00a0This session is attended mostly by men, and they\u2019re struggling. \u00a0Some are thrown by women\u2019s high question-asking quotient, she said; many male advisers wonder whether they should just stay out of the way and have women deal with women.<\/p>\n
Research shows that women as clients don\u2019t necessarily prefer to work with female advisers \u2014 any more than they want pink-themed websites. \u00a0Women don\u2019t need different products or services. \u00a0Mutual funds and\u00a0that work for men ought to be fine for women, too. But women need to be approached differently than men do.<\/p>\n
Companies know this, yet there\u2019s a frustrating lack of agreement about how to go about it. Companies like Merrill Lynch and Vanguard lean toward what I\u2019ll call a more gender-agnostic approach, focusing more on a client\u2019s individual situation. TD Ameritrade, Ameriprise, Barclays and Pax World Investments are among those that seem to be trying to embrace a financial style that is more overtly friendly to women, like companies that focus on women as leaders.<\/p>\n
Vanguard learned through a two-year study, many women prefer advisers to focus on life goals, and not just on mutual funds and other investments. \u00a0Likewise at Merrill Lynch, there\u2019s a conviction that gender \u201ccan be a distraction in financial planning,\u201d said Michael Liersch, head of behavioral finance at Merrill Lynch Wealth Management. To that end, the company is training advisers to use a proprietary tool called the Investor Personality Assessment to give advisers a more objective way to evaluate each client\u2019s goals..<\/p>\n
A survey of 6,000 people in the United States, Britain China, India, Singapore and Hong Kong, suggests that women don\u2019t necessarily lack moxie, skill or interest in money. But they\u2019re often turned off by how money is handled in a mostly male world of finance.<\/p>\n
Many women today prefer companies and advisers with gender smarts. That means being able to field questions on virtually all aspects of a woman\u2019s life, understanding how time-constrained most women feel, and not taking a one-size-fits-all-women approach to planning.<\/p>\n
So what approach is best for women \u2014 and how can Wall Street accelerate its efforts to adjust to their needs? Finance has a long and hidebound history, and it may well be necessary to take a traditional approach to get the ball rolling faster.<\/p>\n
How about giving advisers a bonus when they bring in more women as clients? \u00a0If coral-colored reception areas do the trick, great. But for the sake of creating financial parity at long last, I\u2019m inclined to think there\u2019s nothing like a carrot to get people moving.<\/p>\n
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