VouchedFor has called on the profession to promote the benefits of being an adviser to attract more women to the industry, in the run up to International Women’s Day on Friday (March 8).
According to VouchedFor, only 16 per cent of financial advisers are women highlighting the lack of female representation in the industry.
Naomi Keith, associate partner at Aspire said the industry needs to make clear the benefits of being an adviser for working women.
She said: “People believe that being a financial adviser means doing maths for a living. We need to change that misconception to attract more women to the industry.
“Being a financial adviser offers flexible hours and the ability to work from anywhere. It requires emotional intelligence, it’s about building relationships with people and it pays well. What's not to love?”
Alex Whitson, managing director of VouchedFor said data from its client survey ‘Elevation’, found on average female clients tend to build stronger relationships with female advisers than their male counterparts.
The result of this is 49 per cent of female clients of female financial advisers say they would be ‘passionate advocates’ of their adviser, compared with 39 per cent of female clients of male advisers.
Whitson added: “We’re proud that the proportion of women advisers using VouchedFor (19 per cent) over-indexes the industry, but we want to do more.
“So we’re offering any women advisers who sign up to VouchedFor in the month of March one month’s free access to Elevation to help them build momentum and gain more clients.”
This comes after Yasmina Siadatan, chief revenue officer at Dynamic Planner said there was still “a long way to go” to make the advice profession a truly inclusive one for women in a podcast for FT Adviser.
She said: “The statistics still remain, the propensity of female advisers compared to male hasn’t actually shifted in all those years since I have been in the industry. The number of female advisers remains low so there is still a long way to go.”
alina.khan@ft.com
