In light of our subscription program for advisors, we are taking a moment to review some of the basics of our initiative.
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We talk a lot about changing the conversation about personal finance for women. But why is this important, and what does it mean?
It’s important because women have been underserved by the financial services sector. Many report being patronized or intimidated by financial advisors. If they are part of a couple, they may feel unheard as a result of the discussion being pitched primarily to their spouses or partners. Many don’t feel ready for the challenge of personal financial management, having grown up without examples of mothers who worked or who were responsible for the important household financial decisions.
It’s important to change the conversation because women are rapidly gaining in economic power. They are in the workforce to stay, and have accumulated assets of their own. They are the inheritors of wealth because of their longer life spans. To survive and thrive, financial advisors have to figure out better ways of reaching women. They must realize that the traditional male-defined ways of doing business are not going to work. Women aren’t that interested in the competitive game of money with its constantly changing roster of winners and losers. They are interested in what money can do for their families, for their communities and networks, for their lives.
Changing the conversation will involve a shift in emphasis and delivery rather than a wholesale discarding of subject matter. We still need to talk about investments, debt management, tax reduction, and retirement plans with our clients. There will still be topics that are technical and complicated – estate planning comes immediately to mind – which we must make sure women understand, even when they are totally uninterested or overwhelmed.
Here are just some of the ways that Directions for Women would like to change the conversation about personal finance:
Advisors would talk to women clients:
- Less about being rich, more about being enriched
- Less about price, more about value
- Less about balance sheets, more about balance
- Less about transactions, more about engagement
- Less about financial capital, more about social and human capital
These conversations would take place more often at kitchen tables, and less often in formal conference rooms. Advisors would tell more life stories, and present fewer graphs and charts.
Most importantly of all, advisors would listen more, and talk less.
