Female Financial Advisers Sought as Boomers Need Planning.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-18/female-financial-advisers-sought-as-boomers-need-planning.html

Jean Keener spent years preparing to switch careers from advertising to financial planning. She took classes, passed exams and worked with a national network of advisers before opening her own firm -- on the day Lehman Brothers Holding Inc. collapsed in 2008.

“I was just like ‘Oh wow, this is going to make this probably harder, definitely more interesting,’” said Keener, 41, of Keller, Texas.

She’d learned of the profession after getting divorced and was dissatisfied with advisers who she said were more interested in selling products than providing objective advice. She’d always enjoyed helping friends and family with money matters and “when I thought about my passions, I realized they were tied to financial planning and then I realized it was a career,” said Keener, a fee-only certified financial planner who now has about 250 clients annually.

Financial planning will be among the fastest growingcareers in the U.S. as baby boomers age and seek more advice, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook. As women command a greater share of wealth, the industry is actively recruiting more female practitioners. Growing the ranks will also help solve a talent shortage as more advisers themselves retire.

About 23 percent of certified financial planners are women, a share that has remained flat for at least a decade even as the number of CFPs has increased by about 54 percent, according to the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards Inc., which sets designation requirements.

First Female

“Women are hard to find” in the industry, said Alex Armstrong, 75, who was the first female CFP inWashington and founded her own firm in 1983. A former president of the precursor to the Financial Planning Association, a membership organization for CFPs, she wrote a book in 1993 about widows’ emotional and financial well-being.

She’s had single women and couples come to her because they prefer to work with female advisers, who are in high demand by firms. “They’re a sought-after commodity and five people are seeking one,” said Armstrong.

The underrepresentation was highlighted in the CFP report, which said consumers’ need for financial planning “will go unmet unless the population of CFP professionals more closely reflects the demographics of the public they serve.” The majority of women do not have a gender preference for advisers, yet for those who do, 70 percent would rather have a female planner, Blayney said.

Double Growth

More than 60,000 financial advisers will enter the profession by 2022, a 27 percent increase and more than double the 11 percent average growth rate of all occupations, the BLS projections show.

Changing demographics, the rise of 401(k) and other self-directed retirement plans and health insurance have made planning more complicated and increased demand for financial advisers, said Olivia Mitchell, a professor and executive director of the Pension Research Council at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

More older women are responsible for their finances as they enter retirement widowed, divorced or separated, or never married, she said. Of the almost 24 million women age 65 or older, about 13 million are single, 2013 data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows, compared with 10.5 million in 2000.

Life Expectancies

People “have to be able to draw down money without running out,” said Mitchell, who has been tracking the financial knowledge of those on the verge of retirement and young adults since 1992. “Maybe you can manage between 60 and 75, but with life expectancies going to 100 and above, we know that people’s mental capacities suffer some decline in their 80s and 90s and beyond.”

Women’s wealth will continue to grow, according to a 2010 study by Boston Consulting Group Inc. Among households with at least $250,000 in bankable assets, women controlled a third of wealth in the U.S. and Canada in 2009, up 17 percent from the year earlier, the report said.

Ideally Suited

Women are ideally suited to work in the financial services sector, said Annamaria Lusardi, a professor at George Washington University in Washington and academic director of the Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center. “Women listen, they tend to be not overconfident, they tend to be more risk averse and better protectors of wealth.”

Jean Keener is a fee-only certified financial planner who now has about 250 clients.