65% of the Wealth Transfer Is Going to Women, and They Could Not Give a Shit If You're Ready for Them or Not.
Updated: Sep 7
There are two people in the room. Why does he keep talking to me?
Steph, my partner, is an equal owner of our business. We make decisions together. So why is it that the man sitting in front of us, trying to sell us his services, keeps talking to me, and really, only me?
This has happened more times than you could imagine. And it never ends well for them. It does not matter how good your service is, if you direct all questions to me and expect that I am the final decision maker, you are done. That kind of patriarchal garbage is in complete opposition to the values and culture we are building at Smart Happy Money.
Unfortunately, our experience is not unique. Financial planning clients experience this all the time. A husband and wife come into an adviser's office and the wife is immediately assumed to be the weaker of the two. The man is the one who makes the decisions, so the attention and the questions get directed at him. "Don't worry love, why don't you just go make us a cup of tea." Or at least, i'm told, it can feel that way.
However, there is a brilliant shift underway across the generations in Australia. I'm sure you are already aware that we are seeing, and are about to see, the biggest transfer of generational wealth we have ever experienced. And the brilliant part? Sixty-five per cent of that wealth is going to be inherited by women. Women will hold the wealth, and as we know, with wealth comes power.
We already know that having women in the room where decisions are made, on boards, in leadership, leads to better outcomes. I believe the same will hold true here. Women holding wealth and power will change things for the better. Women will be coming into a lot of money over the next ten years either way.
Where will they go for advice?
Currently, only 22% of the advice industry are women. Only 22%. There is some good news: approximately 33% of new entrants to the industry are women. The tide is turning, albeit slowly.
UK stats show that 70% of baby boomer widows leave their husband's adviser within 12 months. Could that be because they've been ignored by them for years? Because they have no interest in the old boys club? There are no equivalent stats available for Australia yet, but would it really be any different here?
There's a well-worn idea that women are the risk-averse ones. Slower to invest, harder to sell to, needing more hand-holding. The industry has built entire client personas around it. But look at what's actually true. Women are more likely to seek out a financial adviser in the first place, not less. Fifty-six per cent, compared to forty-four per cent of men. They're not avoiding advice. They're avoiding bad advice, and a bad experience.
What women do with money once they hold it also looks different.
They're the ones driving their family's giving decisions, and when they give, they give differently. Not smaller. Different. Among high-net-worth women, one in five is actively looking for investments with a social good element, not just a return. Financial inclusion. Empowerment. Impact you can point to. That's not a niche preference. That's a fifth of the wealthiest women in the country telling the industry what they want, and the industry not listening.
This next part should worry every adviser reading this. Even the women who already have money say they don't trust the person meant to be managing it. Older high-net-worth women are less likely than younger women to have a real, trusted relationship with a financial professional. That's not a pipeline problem. That's a decades-long failure sitting in plain sight, and it's about to become very expensive for the advisers who never fixed it.
Now we come to the crux of the problem. The patriarchy. How is the patriarchy going to handle this shift in the balance of power and wealth? If history is anything to go by, not well.
The financial services industry is honestly one of the last industries to reform. We have made small steps, but certainly no leaps or bounds into the new world. It shows itself in the smallest of ways. Let me ask you a question. Look at your last communication to a heterosexual couple. How did you address them? Whose name is written first?
When you enter data into a CRM, who is client one and who is client two? It is time to start taking these little things more seriously, because they matter. How do we make a profession that is still male dominated, where the language, systems and culture all support the promotion of men, attractive to women? And how do we make wealthy women comfortable to see an adviser at all?
A few places to start:
- Change what gets rewarded. A sales-hours, AUM-growth comp model correlates with lower female representation everywhere it shows up. The accounting and limited-advice sector sits at 38% female against financial planning's 22%. That's not a coincidence. We can lean something from that.
- Make senior women visible, not just junior ones. Women who enter the profession tend to stay. The drop-off happens higher up, in leadership and ownership. Mentoring graduates doesn't fix a leak at the top.
- Redesign the first meeting, not just the marketing. Both names first. Questions addressed to both people. A goals-based conversation, not a risk questionnaire built around a client profile that was never her.
Does any of this matter to you?
Women are inheriting the wealth. They will need advice. This is going to happen no matter our industry's response. So does it matter if you change at all? Does it matter if the industry does?
Well, I guess not. But just like the use of AI, those who do not adapt will be left behind. Your potential clients are about to change. Are you willing to change as well?
So, what are you going to do about it? Because it is us, as an industry, who need to make that decision.
The women will not change for us.
---
Ben Graham-Nellor is a financial adviser and founder of Smart Happy Money, based in Melbourne. He writes about building a more human, more inclusive financial advice industry.
A note on how this was written: the ideas, opinions, and experience here are mine. I used AI to help get them into readable shape. Seemed only fair to say so.