Women Will Soon Control More Money Than Ever. Is Wall Street Ready?

It’s a woman’s world. Or at least it will be once trillions of dollars change hands over the next two decades amid what’s been dubbed the “great wealth transfer.” 

You’ve likely heard about this historic passing of $124 trillion through 2048, with roughly $106 trillion bequeathed from mainly baby boomers to Gen X, millennials and Gen Z (and the rest headed to charities). But the new normal Wall Street needs to prepare for is one in which women control more money than they ever have before: $47 trillion of the $124 trillion is projected to be inherited by young women, according to Cerulli Associates. Meanwhile, more than 95% of the $54 trillion headed to the pockets of surviving spouses is expected to go to women. 

Experts say that the shift requires the financial advisory industry to examine its ability — or lack thereof — to accommodate the goals, lifestyles and preferences of women holding the purse strings. 

“There’s a reason that women are investing less. There’s a reason that we’re not engaging with our advisors in the same way. There’s a reason that the majority of women who make over $250,000 a year don’t feel secure with their money,” says Emily Green, head of wealth management at Ellevest, a financial advisory firm tailored to women. “The only answer to that is that the financial industry is not serving them.” 

But that’s changing. 

‘Influx of Opportunities’ 

Despite women controlling roughly a third of retail financial assets in the US and Europe, a number expected to grow to 40-45% by 2030, affluent women are much less likely to work with a professional advisor than their male counterparts, according to McKinsey. That’s because while firms will often talk the talk (launch campaigns or events targeting female clients), they haven’t been willing to walk the walk (actually change their offerings or how they work with clients). Now, they’re learning that they have to. 

It’s no secret that Wall Street is male-dominated and always has been, and the same goes for the people behind the scenes helping investors manage their money. Of the roughly 106,000 certified financial planners (CFPs) working today, 76.2% are male. 

Attracting more women clients requires advisory firms to reconsider whether their workforce reflects the demographic that they’re looking to serve, says Alex Roca, host of Fidelity Investments’ Women Talk Money community and a former financial consultant at Fidelity. 

“Not only are we going to see an influx of opportunities because women are inheriting money,” she adds, “but also because there are going to be more opportunities in the workforce to reflect that transfer of wealth.” 

Ditch the Pink 

Advisors attempting to attract more women is by no means a new phenomenon, which just goes to show how ineffective some approaches have been. 

“There’s a mismatch between what half the population is asking for and what tens of thousands of companies are delivering on the other side,” Green says. “At first, people were thinking if we talk about work-life balance or make things pink, it’ll work. It’s a lot more than that.” 

Sallie Krawcheck co-founded Ellevest 11 years ago to bridge the gender gap, which required formulating investment strategies that prioritize what women actually care about, such as a values-aligned approach. (S&P found that women generally prioritize a company’s stance on environmental and social issues more highly than men when making investment decisions.) 

And Green says that while financial planning has often been framed as squeezing the last dollar out of every decision so that you die with the most money possible, many women are simply trying to live the most fruitful life possible. That’s why Ellevest emphasizes what Green calls “values mapping” — aligning investing decisions with goals, such as early retirement or even moving to a higher-tax state if it will make them happy. Advisors also need to account for the fact that women tend to live longer than men, which could mean paying more for long-term care or health care later in life. 

Ellevest regularly collects data on what women are currently concerned about, and over the past two years, Green says interest in managing the finances of widowhood, inheritance and divorce has risen as the wealth transfer gets underway. 

Listen and Learn 

When financial planner Carla Adams opened her firm, Ametrine Wealth, in 2023, she received a note from a former client asking if she could return to working with Adams. The client’s new male advisor, whom she began working with after a move, “didn’t listen to her.” Adams, who’s based in Lake Orion, Michigan, and designed her firm to better serve women, said it’s not uncommon for women to feel unheard when seeking financial advice. 

“They don’t want to be talked down to, rushed through decisions or have assumptions made about what they do or don’t know,” Adams says.  

Nearly a quarter of respondents to a recent survey from the CFP Board said women rank the ability to find suitable financial solutions to a client’s specific challenges as the most important quality in an advisor. But being able to share complex financial topics simply and effectively, making the client feel comfortable and listening without judgment were each listed as important qualities by more than 90% of respondents. 

Much of financial planning is similar when you talk to men and women: Both are looking to save for goals like retirement and their children’s education, Roca says. It’s how you talk about the planning that is different. 

“Sometimes men will be more aggressive. They’ll think about the growth, they’ll think about investments, they’ll think about taking risk and taking more risk to make their money grow,” she adds. (A study published by J.P. Morgan Wealth Management last year found that 77% of women say they use a risk-averse strategy compared with just 58% of men.) “Women tend to be a little more conservative and savings-leaning … it’s about wanting to get them to make their money work just as hard as they do,” Roca says. 

And amid the wealth transfer, managers could have a lot more of that money to put to work.