Advice ‘about emotions, not numbers’
Female financial advisers have the opportunity to highlight their different skill sets as female clients do not want to be “talked down to” by a male adviser.
Speaking to Money Management, Natallia Smith, principal financial adviser at Melbourne-based TruWealth Advice, said she had specifically focused her practice on female clients who were single, widowed or divorced.
“When you first start a business, you work with everyone but as it went on, I found I really loved working with women,” Smith said.
“A lot of them were worried about making mistakes and I found I could add real value and satisfaction to their lives.”
She said there was a trend among women who had relied on men in their life to look after finances which meant they were unsure how to act after a death or divorce.
“I have women come to me who say they left the finances to their partners, or that they’re ‘bad at maths’ or are fearful so they haven’t achieved financial independence and my job is to give them the knowledge they need to do so,” Smith said.
“Women have the mentality that it’s the ‘man’s job’, they might be good at saving and budgeting but they haven’t got into investing. They accumulate this money and then they struggle to know what to do with it and have it sitting in cash.”
She said female advisers had a different skillset to male ones which meant female clients sometimes preferred to speak with an adviser of the same sex as them.
“It’s more about communication, women are more empathetic, men focus on the results achieved in performance terms but for women it’s about the impact and the outcome of the investments. Women don’t want to be ‘talked down to’ by a male adviser,” she said.
“Financial planning is about people and emotions, not numbers.”
AUTHOR
Laura Dew
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