Wealth Management

It turns out that if you're a female investor, you're very "on trend" right now. SO relieved to hear that. At least when it comes to the wealth management sector. We've previously reported on Sally Krawcheck's Ellevest robo-advisor targeting women, and she just snapped up another $32+ million funding round in late August. The firm now has a total of 18 investors (many of whom are individuals) including bond king Mohamed El-Erian and Morningstar. Now we hear that earlier this week, RBC has launched a new wealth management initiative targeted at women which includes a series of videos of employees sharing why they became wealth managers with RBC. The same landing page also includes a link to an RBC report on women and wealth transfer, citing the following...

"Women have a powerful impact on family wealth and the transfer of assets to the next generation. This report, the first of four in our wealth transfer series, looks at how women build, preserve and pass on their family legacy.

Key findings:
  • Women are the critical decision-makers in matters of family wealth and educating their children about money
  • Women take a collaborative approach to financial knowledge and management, and look to a broad range of sources for advice and support." (Source: RBC Website)

On top of that, earlier this week, it was also reported that Edward Jones was overhauling ITS program to support women advisors as well. It's like deja vu all over again, no?

"Like almost all other firms, Edward Jones executives think the future of the company will be dependent on an advisory workforce that mirrors the demographic diversity of its clients, and have put in place programs to help make that a priority. Unlike many other firms, these executives are willing to admit when their efforts have fallen short, and have come up with a concrete plan to improve.

The WINGS (Women’s Initiative for New Growth Strategies) program at Edward Jones was started in 2009 and gave a name to advisors who volunteered to help attract new women advisors and support those already employed by the brokerage. But participation was too low, it lacked necessary home-office support, and failed to dramatically increase the number of women advisors at the firm as much as anticipated (though the number of women advisors did grow).

To turn it around, the company announced Tuesday the creation of a new firmwide network of its women advisors and the reintroduction of WINGS." (Source: Wealthmanagement.com)

Our takeaway from all this is that CERTAINLY organizations like RBC and Edward Jones want to have the appearance of gender equality and inclusion, and show their initiatives targeting women. But beyond that, our deeper analysis would conclude that the ROBOS are winning female investors over, and Sally Krawcheck's social inveseting experiment with Ellevest is gaining traction and concerning the traditional wealth management firms, so much so that they are recrafting their image to better - and more aggressively - target female investors.

This will be an interesting battle to watch in the coming days and years.