By Megan Tran
http://www.financialobserver.com.au/articles/advice-could-help-address-gender-gap
This Advisers need to engage female clients at a younger age to ensure they are making the best decisions for their long-term financial circumstances when it comes to work and family commitments, according to Advice Intelligence founder and chief executive Jacqui Henderson.
Speaking to Financial Observer, Henderson said women’s concerns and considerations when it came to engaging an adviser were in a different order to men.
“Women will first consider if they are comfortable in a long-term advice relationship before looking for trust and social proof,” Henderson said.
“Whereas men will base the initial advice relationship on trust, social proof and relationships will develop over time.”
She said advisers needed to develop a more tailored offering around women’s financial issues to guide them in making important decisions, particularly around starting a family, which often involved women stepping back from their earning capacity.
“These choices impact future earnings and superannuation balances. Advisers need to look at bridging this gap to equalise both positions, pooling the family earnings and balancing these out,” she said.
Henderson added that as advisers increasingly moved away from a product focus and towards goals-based advice, these family advice issues would be able to be addressed as they often featured in individual and joint financial goals.
She said goals-based advisers who helped women learn the basics of financial literacy, and specifically cash-flow, would help address the gender wealth gap and empower women to be financially independent.
“This may include maintaining earning capacity while raising children. This is where accessing maternity leave is so important,” she said.
“Employers need to improve parental leave schemes and the concept of paternity leave. Rather than the concept of maternity leave [there should be] shared leave for raising children.”
Henderson said her firm was doing its bit to help empower women in an approachable way through tools, education, and knowledge that would hopefully encourage them to seek financial advice and ultimately make better financial decisions.is a test media post.
