The financial services industry is one that has a long and illustrious tradition, although historically men have hugely outnumbered the women working in it.
Among the various branches of financial services, financial advice is one profession that boasts flexibility and is often seen as a popular choice for women, especially those who are busy mothers.
But how female-friendly is the financial advice industry?
Flexibility
“Being a financial adviser is probably one of the best roles for being a busy mother who still wishes to actively keep up a career,” says Hannah Owen, financial planner at Quilter.
Some women have set up their own financial advice businesses in pursuit of greater flexibilityShe explains the flexibility is fantastic as much of the work can be done at any time. For example, completing paperwork and admin on cases, finding quotes, completing research and keeping abreast with industry news can all be done whenever a mother’s diary allows.
Marlene Outrim, managing director at Uniq Family Wealth, echoes this view.
“[Financial advice] is extremely flexible for women. When I started I was 40 and I had a young child who was 10, and I was a single mother as well at that time. I managed to run the business, see my clients and cope with all the childcare and looking after the home as well.”
However, not everyone agrees that financial advice is a flexible industry for women.
Anna Sofat, chartered financial planner and founder of Addidi Wealth, says: “The financial advice industry isn’t flexible towards most people, least of all busy mothers. There is a culture that has been adopted from corporate America and the effects on employees is ugly.”
Key Points
- Financial advice is considered to be a flexible career choice for women.
- Data shows women are more likely than men to experience challenges balancing work and family.
- Some women have set up their own businesses in pursuit of greater flexibility.
A report by McKinsey in 2018 – Closing the gap: Leadership perspectives on promoting women in financial services – found that an ‘ambition gap’ persists in financial services, even among women at senior levels.
The report revealed half of senior-level women cited the “inability to balance family and work” as a major reason for not wanting to pursue executive roles.
“This finding is perhaps not surprising, given the fact that as women’s responsibilities at work increase with seniority, they largely maintain their responsibilities at home,” the report stated.
Flexible working can help, but some advisers believe flexibility should revolve around consideration to both busy mothers and fathers.
Jeannie Boyle, chartered financial planner and executive director at EQ Investors, says: “I think the key is to make sure that flexibility is available to everyone – for working mothers to be successful we need the working fathers to be carrying their share of the mental load.
“We need to talk about family-friendly working practices rather than female-friendly working practices.”
This point is echoed by Kay Ingram, director of public policy at LEBC Group.
She says: “Mothers who want a career in any field need to seek employers who offer flexibility, but more importantly, need a partner who sees her career as being as important as their own and is willing to share childcare responsibilities.
“We will know we have achieved equality of opportunity when we start asking about the needs of working parents, rather than assuming women must always be the primary carers in a family,” Ms Ingram stresses.
But while Ms Owen of Quilter acknowledges the financial advice industry is male dominated, she still considers the industry to be welcoming for women.
“The advice industry is hugely male dominated, but that does not mean it isn’t female friendly,” she says.
She adds that 99 per cent of clients at Quilter do not consider gender a factor when pursuing financial advice, as long as the adviser “fits the credentials and provides trustworthy advice”.
Setting up businesses
Some women in the industry have set up their own businesses in pursuit of greater flexibility.
Would their career have been different had they continued to work as an employed adviser instead of setting up their own business?
Rebecca Robertson started Evolution Financial Planning in 2011.
The company is solely made up of female advisers, and aims to cater to everybody, including female clients.
Her journey was far from easy. She says she was made redundant when she was 14 weeks pregnant with her first child in 2007.
“There were no jobs in financial services. I was unemployed and had to go to [various] job centres. It was a very humbling experience. I got back into the industry a year or so later.”
However, she says when she returned to the industry she did not like the “sales culture” she saw.
She notes her career would not have been the same had she not ventured out and started her own thing.
Ms Sofat set up her own business in 2006, which became Addidi Wealth in 2008, mainly due to not feeling good about the integrity of a business.
For Ms Sofat, the benefits outweighed the tough aspects of starting a business.
She says: “It took me a while to really settle on what I wanted to do.
“I knew I wanted to work with women. It was always important to me that my clients felt empowered and that it was a collaborative relationship with a good balance between give and take.”
Uniq’s Ms Outrim says anything that enables people to build greater soft skills and emotional intelligence is key, as many clients’ issues revolve around factors beyond personal finance, such as death of a spouse, for example.
“A client came to me whose wife died a week ago. They had been married for 57 years and all he wanted to talk to me was about his wife, and I gave him the time and space to do that,” she says.
But Ms Ingram’s view is that self-employment in financial advice is not always the easy solution to increase flexibility for women and men with children.
She warns: “Running a regulated financial advice practice requires a great deal of time to be spent on non-revenue generating activity, such as keeping up-to-date with compliance, technical training, ensuring back office and communication systems are secure, maintaining adequate solvency and professional indemnity requirements, and billing and accounts.”
Hence, she suggests finding an employer who will provide all this and who has a flexible working policy is likely to be less stressful and will enable a better work-life balance to be achieved.
Saloni Sardana is features writer at FTAdviser and Financial Adviser
