While women are working towards closing the gap on earning as much as men (on average), their financial wants and needs remain very different. Women make up a hugely significant, yet underserved market for financial services. According to a CNN Money article on female investors, “already 40% of women out-earn their spouses, according to Pew Research, and nine in 10 women are expected to be the sole financial decision maker for their household at some point given that women are staying single for longer and often outliving their partners.” Living longer also means that women are more likely than average to inherit wealth or businesses at some point in their lives. So if women are outliving, and sometimes out-earning, their spouses, why isn’t the financial services industry catering to them more?
Clearly, both men and women want to make money when it comes to investing, but they have differences in their financial wants and needs. Studies show that women tend to be more focused than men on financial security, and favor stability over the risk of making or losing big money. They lack confidence in financial decision making despite the fact that some studies show their investments to be less volatile and better performing on average, according to studies by LPL Financial. Furthermore, they want more information and education to empower themselves so that they can make their own financial decisions. In the same LPL Financial study, 69% of women cite “communicating in a way I understand” as an extremely important quality in an advisor.
The many issues that women cite indicate that the individual female investor is currently being underserved by the current financial services market landscape. Many women, more so than men, are bypassing advising services altogether. In fact, according to a study by Harvard Business Review, “47% of female wealth creators and an astounding 75% of women under 40 report not having an advisor.”
However, if women value the knowledge and information to understand and make decisions about their own financial futures, they may be better served by taking more control of their own investments.
Chaikin Analytics allows individual investors to easily monitor their own stock portfolio, filtering stocks through a 20-factor quantitative model that predicts a stock’s potential over the ensuing 3 to 6 months and displays a rating on a color-blocked scale from bullish (green) to bearish (red). For those who do use professional financial advisors, Chaikin Analytics can be a great supplemental tool to monitor the decisions their advisor is making, educate themselves, and involve themselves in the conversation. But, for the 75% of women who don’t, it gives them the tools to manage their own investments. Especially as women cite communication, security, and education as major financial wants, women make up a market that perhaps stands the most to gain by tools like Chaikin Analytics.