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January 12, 2021 at 04:15 PM
(Photo: Shutterstock)
The number of female certified financial planners increased to an all-time high of 20,633 in 2020 — a 3.1% gain from 2019, according to the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards. The number of Black and Hispanic CFPs grew 12.6%, but these planners still make up a sliver of the total CFP population.
The growth rate of the female CFP population fell slightly from 2019, when the number rose 4% to top 20,000 for the first time.
Women accounted for 23.3% of CFPs last year, according to the CFP Board.
According to the CFP’s WIN program, launched in 2013, the share of planners who are women has remained around 23% for the last several years. A white paper released after the launch of the program said the growth of women in the business “will be a marathon not a sprint.”
More Work to Be Done
There is still more work that needs to be done to attract women to the field, according to Melissa Brennan, a financial planner at ARS Private Wealth in Houston, Texas.
“I think the success of collegiate financial planning programs has really helped draw more women into the business,” she told ThinkAdvisor on Tuesday. “When I started 20 years ago, financial planners came from the insurance or investment world and wanted to offer their clients more, so they became financial planners. Most of the insurance and investment people 20 years ago were men.”
Brennan recalled she had a sales associate at a mutual fund event tell her once: “If you want to know which direction to go, follow the gray-haired men in the blue suits.”
“However, “now that college students can enroll in financial planning programs and get bachelor’s and master’s degrees in financial planning, we’re drawing in a substantial number of young women [to] the field,” she said.
