Skip to main content

You are here

Advertisement

Female Breadwinners Not Thrilled With Advisors

A new survey finds that the woman is the breadwinner in 4 of 10 American families, and that those breadwinners are widely dissatisfied with their financial advisors.

Overall, the women gave their advisor an average of ‘5’ on a satisfaction scale of 1 to 10, according to the report by the Family Wealth Advisors Council (FWAC), a nationwide network of independent wealth management firms.

Not that they don’t seem to need the help; among those who currently work with a financial advisor, 62% said they are not as knowledgeable about their finances as they would like to be and 19% said they are not knowledgeable at all, according to the study of more than 1,000 working women.

The report claims that 95% of women will be their family’s principal financial decision maker at some point in their lives.

According to the report, breadwinner women are responsible for at least than 75% of all financial planning responsibilities in their households, and are assuming as much as 90% of the responsibility for charitable giving, paying for college, retirement planning and overall saving.

Breadwinner women seek a wide range of services from their financial advisors, such as coordinating with other advisors and creating strategies for charitable giving and higher education, but frequently do not receive them, the study notes.

An estimated 70% of widowed women change their financial advisor within a year of their husband's death because they don’t have a relationship with the previous advisor.

The 1,074 women in the FWAC Breadwinner Study were personally invited to participate by a FWAC member or a professional who works closely with a FWAC member firm.

Advertisement