How to remove barriers for women in wealth management

Atricia Roberts first wanted to be a planner because of a financial advisor who "changed the trajectory" of her life by working with her family in the wake of a childhood tragedy, she said.

"I was motivated that I could do that kind of work for other people," Roberts, partner and chief operating officer with Rockville, Maryland-based advisory practice Curo Private Wealth, said in a panel about advancing women in the profession at last week's conference for the Women's Impact Initiative Network of the Association of African American Financial Advisors in Chicago. 

Unfortunately, her experiences being left out of opportunities often afforded to men at a large wealth management company's branch suggested that "the business was not for me, it was not for people who looked like me," Roberts said. "It became such an emotional deterrent." 

In a discussion in front of dozens of female professionals in attendance, Roberts and three other executives whose success in the industry belies the severe underrepresentation of women among advisors and in the top ranks of wealth management firms shared why there are many barriers toward greater representation and how the industry can act toward removing them. The lessons carry major implications for women's careers and the field's success in serving clients.

"Think about that person who helped her," said the panel's moderator, JPMorgan Wealth Management Regional Director Laura Stone. "Every one of you may be that person, and think about the ripple effect."

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Since fewer than a quarter of certified financial planners are women and only 2% are African American, the industry clearly faces an uphill climb toward hiring, retaining and promoting more Black female advisors. One problem stems from outright sexual harassment or other alleged discriminatory practices that can add up to a professional environment often described as a "boys club." 

In fact, when Julie Ragatz, the vice president of next-gen and advisor development programs at Omaha, Nebraska-based Carson Group, asked her father why "he never once suggested I go into the business" even though he was a longtime advisor, "what he said to me is, 'It wasn't a business I wanted my daughter in,'" she said.

"What I started to see is that I wanted that answer to be different for other women," Ragatz said. "For me, it's about changing the perception of this business in the minds of young people I talk to."

Part of altering those patterns means providing more flexibility for employees of any gender who are parents. Once Libet Anderson, the president of wealth management with Birmingham, Alabama-based Concourse Financial Group, made her way "into a position where I could affect hiring," she "always found places for single moms" as an executive who spent a decade in that role herself, Anderson said. She shared the story of one single mother who has taken part-time roles in Anderson's firm, enabling the employee "to stay with us" for many years rather than leaving the industry entirely, she said.

"I can't tell you how proud she is today," Anderson said. "We've got to give people room and give them space to be in this business and help them, lift them up."

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Anderson's remark drew a round of applause from the audience. Still, the demographics of the industry reminded Stone of the necessity of networking and sharing best practices between women navigating the field "along with all of the structural things that we need to continue to change," she said. She mentioned Ursula Burns, the former CEO of Xerox.

"We need to carry this forward," Stone said. "We did not have a Black female CEO of a Fortune 500 company until 2009."

For women aspiring to careers in the field, it's important to understand that "there's a spot for you in this business, we just have to figure out which one it is," Ragatz said. At the same time, she called for companies to be "willing to be self-critical," such as examining what went wrong when she wrote a job description for an internship at Carson Group that generated 96 male applicants and only four women among the group, she noted. 

Without referring specifically to a current lawsuit accusing her firm of gender-based discrimination or similar ones accusing many other prominent companies in the industry of violating civil rights laws, Ragatz said leaders in the industry should take a measure "of responsibility for the fact that their outcomes aren't what they should be." Carson Group is "imperfect" but also "curious and striving," Ragatz said. 

"We're trying to do better just like everyone else," she said. "I think that's a culture where change can happen, even if it's not at a pace as fast as you might like it."

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Mentorship could play a critical role as well, according to Roberts, who credited "an older white man" with encouraging her to return to the industry as a career-changer and alter her previous mindset that "no one wants to hear from me" as a younger Black woman. 

Roberts is "100% convinced" that mentorship "is the way that we undo the system that was created around us," she said. "It was his coaching that gave me that confidence and that experience, and I think that's the way we can shift the dynamic about women in this industry."