The Top Three Myths about Women Investors

Successful marketing requires an understanding of your target market. Too often, however, advisors are misled by outdated industry ideas and strategies that have shifted over time. Advisors who target women investors should avoid myth-based errors that others have made.

My friend, whom I’ll call Lauren (she requested I use a pseudonym), is a successful consultant with a good reputation and an international resume. She enjoys her considerable disposable income, her spacious Chicago condo, and weekends at her vacation home in Wisconsin.

But she doesn’t especially like her financial advisor.

“I need to be more proactive about investing and money in general, but I don’t have the extra time to focus on it,” she told me recently over drinks on her poolside terrace. ”My current advisor is okay, but he doesn’t really feel right to me.”

Why not? What does an advisor have to do to “feel right” to her? What’s Lauren looking for and, in general when it comes to financial advisors, what do women really want?

My firm, Invesco, set out to answer those questions with a series of qualitative focus groups in the US and Canada. Women participating in the groups already worked with financial advisors and had at least $100,000 of investable assets; many of them had much more. What we heard surprised us – and what was even more interesting was what we didn’t hear. Read more.....