Who run the financial advising world? Definitely not “girls.”
While women have made strides to earn acceptance into a variety of political and personal domains, the financial advising industry “stubbornly lags,” a new report finds.
According to a report from global research and consulting firm Cerulli Associates, women remain a minority presence among financial advisors.
Women represent 50.8% of the population according to the U.S. Census Bureau, but only 15.7% of the financial advisor headcount. Of the 310,504 total advisors across all channels, a mere 48,631 are women, according to Cerulli.
“Women remain outnumbered in financial advisor communities despite efforts to recruit more female advisors; only 16 in every 100 advisors are women,” Marina Shtyrkov, analyst at Cerulli, said in a statement.
The good news is that Cerulli found a slight uptick in female rookie advisors, which it says could indicate a positive trend toward an even gender distribution.
Compared with the industry average of 14.8% for established female advisors — excluding insurance BD and retail bank BD channels to match the rookie advisor sample — women make up a greater percentage (23.8%) of new advisor cohorts.
In the report, female advisors identify barriers to entry for more young women considering the profession.
Cerulli finds that close to half (49%) of female advisors believe that a lack of familiarity with the financial advisor profession is a major factor hindering women from joining the industry.
“As they search for entry-level jobs out of college, look to re-enter the workforce, or decide to pivot into financial services, women often simply do not consider financial advising an option,” the report states.
According to Cerulli, the commission lifestyle associated with financial advisors can also be a deterrent among many women.