More Women are CFPs. Why Hasn’t Representation Budged?

Like punk band Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna says: Girls to the front.

Many Wall Street jobs have traditionally been male-dominated, and financial advice is no exception. Just under a quarter of certified financial planners are women, a figure that has remained remarkably flat since the early 1990s, according to CFP Board data. More women are becoming CFPs each year, but men are entering the profession at nearly the same pace. The gender makeup looks much the same today as it did when the Riot Grrrl movement started.

“Getting from roughly a quarter to half the profession isn’t something you achieve by recruiting more women into a system that hasn’t changed,” said Kathryn Berkenpas, chief operating officer at the CFP Board. “A lot of attrition happens mid-career, often tied to firm culture, compensation transparency and access to sponsorship or book-of-business transfer opportunities, not a lack of interest.”

We Don’t Wanna Assimilate

Much of the profession’s gender gap comes down to a lack of awareness, said Cary Carbonaro, an advisor at Ashton Thomas Private Wealth. “A lot of women think it’s a 100% sales, eat-what-you-kill job, but that’s just one career path,” she told Advisor Upside. “That’s the hardest track and turns a lot of women off from the profession, but there’s a million other roles in financial planning where you don’t have to hunt and get clients.”

The industry’s cutthroat mentality and gregarious stereotypes initially discouraged Korinne Sugasawara, founder of Kite & Compass Financial. “As an introverted queer woman of color, I just never saw myself reflected in this field,” she said. The profession’s language can also be off-putting, she added, noting that financial planning should be rooted in mutual trust rather than “chasing down” clients.

We Wanna Make It Easier. To help bring more women into the profession, the CFP Board and Carbonaro announced a scholarship last week:

• Carbonaro’s $125,000 donation will award $5,000 per student seeking to complete a CFP program, which would qualify the student to sit for the CFP exam.
• The scholarship is specifically designed for women career changers. Carbonaro herself first worked in marketing and product development on Wall Street before transitioning to a fiduciary role.

“Women aren’t simply a demographic the profession needs to recruit, they’re an increasingly important client base,” said Francheska Ruiz, a CFP with Tobias Financial Advisors. “It’s becoming even more important for the profession to better reflect the people it serves.”