Last year, FTRC undertook research with Opinium on behalf of Dynamic Planner with 4,000 members of the public.* We commissioned the survey to explore the opportunity for technology to narrow the advice gap, after Dame Harriett Baldwin, MP, gave a keynote at the 2024 Dynamic Planner Conference where she said: “Only the rich, the 8%, can benefit from the healthy financial options. The remaining 92% are being left in the generic aisles’’.
For International Women’s Day 2025, we decided to look further into what this means for women specifically, and found that despite many advances in terms of equality and income, women are still less likely to seek financial advice than men – the research showed that 18% of men were receiving financial advice versus 11% of women.
Why does this matter?
The incomes of women continue to rise, along with the average age of death, yet they unfortunately remain underserved by both advisers and the financial structures that we have today. Analysis of our risk profiling data shows that while women can be more risk adverse, have lower levels of confidence and financial wellbeing, given the right tools they can make better financial decisions than men. The confidence having a financial coach, the right information and that information delivered to them in the right way can be invaluable. As clients, women offer great potential, so what is standing in the way of firms shifting the balance to having a more diversified client base?
Engagement and communicating to women in the right way is crucial – our research found that 53% of men receive advice in person versus 46% of women, and this could indicate that some women may prefer to engage with their adviser in a different way. When asked, 1 in 2 women (54%) said they would like to track investments and access personalised financial content via a mobile phone app – which was significantly higher than any other form of communication – including email and video call.
Currently just 18% of women receive financial advice via an app – indicating that of those women who say they would like an app, a third do not have one – the question is, how do we get apps like Tram to them? Technology has been transformational for financial planning and it has the power to help firms break down barriers in a way we’ve not seen before. We need to work together to #AccelerateAction and bring women into this new way of shaping their future – digitalisation of the financial planning process could be the gamechanger women need.
*An AdviserSoftware.com report commissioned by Dynamic Planner in 2024: Meeting the future financial planning needs of consumers through technology.
