#AdviseHer - please share your views on financial planning for women
Hello! I’m Fiona from the marketing team at Parmenion. I’m leading our new #AdviseHer campaign and hope you might be able to share some insight with me. #AdviseHer aims to highlight the importance of bringing more women into the conversation about investing and financial planning. I’m looking for paraplanner perspectives on why females are less engaged with their money. Should we be using less technical and more emotive language when talking about investing and pensions? And what’s your experience of planning for couples – are both sides considered equally?
Another important part of #AdviseHer is celebrating the great people we have giving financial advice and the importance of diversity in everything we do. If you’ve got a career story or an #AdviseHer point of view you’d like to share, I’d love to hear from you. Thank you 
Comments
Hi Fiona, I think this is a terrific idea. It's really important that more women learn about their finances and it's great that companies and providers are taking such a proactive stance on initiatives like this.
In my experience, (which has no science behind it all, mind you!), where I have been involved in working with couples, with older generations, the man pretty much dealt with the finances. Similarly, this happens with wealthier couples, where the wealth has largely been made by the male, but ownership has been split with a lower tax paying spouse.
The women seemed happy to let their partner lead in these examples; they sometimes ask a question, but usually the decisions are made by the man.
This seems to be less the case the younger the couple gets, or where there is a more even split of wealth, but again, there's no science with that!
I'm not sure there is an answer as to why women are less engaged with their finances, and whilst not wanting to assume, it could be a throw back from earlier generations where men predominantly dealt with 'that sort of thing'. However, in a world where men are more likely to die before their wives / partners, it's really important that women understand their own and their family finances, so they are better equipped to deal with them, whatever the situation.
I think using less technical language is something we should be doing for everyone we deal with regardless of gender. We need to make sure we communicate with clients simply, effectively, clearly and a way that totally conveys what they need to understand, and we should all be striving towards that.
On the point of more emotive language, I would ask is that a specifically female thing? Is a woman more like to engage than a man because of that? I think this goes back to the point that we need to make sure that the ideas and language we use are engaging and appealing to everyone because we could be in danger of actually being (quite unintentionally) patronising in our attempt to be more female friendly!
I think the way to get more engagement from women is to understand what puts them off in the first place; is there any research on the subject, I would expect there must be somewhere! Once that has been identified, we can all, as a profession, start working on solutions to that.
I'm a great believer in people buy people, and this is no different with men or women. Would women engage more with a female financial planner than a male one though? I don't know the answer to that but I do know lots of really fantastic, talented, and really successful financial planners who happen to be female!
But it's not just about the Financial Planners. Yes they are the ones 'giving' the financial advice, and so often the face of the business or company the client engages with, but there is often a whole team behind them - paraplanners, client services / administrators, compliance etc, who are (and again it may be a bit of a generalisation) usually female. These are also really fantastic, talented and successful people who should be celebrated as they are, nowadays in most forward thinking and progressive practices, just as vital to the client's engagement and service as the planners and advisers are.
I think there's unlikely to be one simple answer to how we get more women more engaged with their finances but initiatives like #Adviseher are a fantastic start to understanding how we address and resolve it, so well done you and Parmenion!
I'm happy to have a natter about any of this if you like and sorry for waffling on a bit! 😊
Hi Caro, thank you so much. We do have some research on attitudes and behavioural biases which will be added to our #AdviseHer hub in the next few weeks, so look out for that. Your question - would women engage more with a female financial planner than a male one - is definitely one for further exploration, as is the opportunity to show the value of that whole team effort behind financial advice.