Did you know that women make 83 percent of the household consumer decisions and control about $14 trillion in assets? Through inheritance, a minimum of $22 trillion in assets will shift to women in the coming years. A recent article in WealthManagement.com highlighted the increasingly powerful role women are playing in family wealth and in turn, family values and philanthropic impact. An easy way for advisers to deepen their client relationships is to make sure women are included in conversations about wealth.
Philanthropic Shifts
The aforementioned article explores many of the economic shifts involving women and family wealth – for example, that women are typically the household CFOs, making significant financial decisions for their family.
It also highlights philanthropic shifts like how women have a greater inclination to giving than men and are almost always involved in gift decisions. Research by the Women’s Philanthropy Institute found:
- Nearly three-fourths of the general population households decide jointly on philanthropy
- In high-net-worth households, nearly one-half decide jointly.
- When only one spouse decides, the wife decides twice as often as the husband.
Impact of Wealth on Family Legacy
The top concerns affluent parents have for their children is not the dollar amount of wealth to be passed on, but rather, the impact of that wealth on their families. If focusing on the impact of wealth becomes a priority for the family, it should also be a focus in the wealth advisor/client relationship. Here are a few ideas for how an advisor can have a meaningful role as it relates to family legacy:
- Facilitating conversations on how family wealth can be a launchpad for good
- Involving children in the process of evaluating impact initiatives
- Aligning the family around a core vision of what makes their legacy unique
Why Advisors Should Care
Ensuring your client conversations include women, and even a broader set of family members, can have both immediate and long-term positive benefits to your advisory practice. Seven out of 10 women today say they are dissatisfied with their financial advisor and the advice they get.1 Discussing family legacy, values, and impact can help protect your business from client attrition. Professional advisors have an opportunity to embrace the rise of women as philanthropic leaders to deepen their relationships with entire client families by making clients aware of the core drivers of successful wealth transition and how philanthropy can be used to align the family for successful wealth transition.
To read the full article, visit Wealth Management, for more tips on how you can transition client conversations to impact and legacy, read our recent blog on the topic.
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