In the late aughts, Chantal McNeily, now an investment and wealth advisor at RBC Dominion Securities in Barrie, Ont., had a life-changing moment while taking a course in service, marketing and management at Harvard University.
She read a Harvard Business Review global study that showed that women were the most underserved market, across industries, “on the planet.” The study was based on interviews with 12,000 women, and of all those sectors, they were most dissatisfied with the financial services industry.
“I was a woman working in a financial institution at the time, on a sales floor of over 350 people, and only seven of us were women,” she said. “It just ignited something in me.”
While she said her male colleagues have been her biggest supporters and allies, she realized, “here’s a problem that exists everywhere in the world, and I want to figure out a solution of how we can kind of change that narrative.”
McNeily has since helped introduce a more inclusive leave program at RBC DS upon joining the firm six years ago. She’s mentored dozens of women and girls across the country, and was named president and chair of FuturFund, a non-profit focused on girls’ financial literacy, in 2024. She created a women’s community to foster financial education and connection. And she has built an advisory practice focused on women business owners.
She’s one of a growing number of advisors who focus on serving women clients. To commemorate International Women’s Day, we reached out to a few of them to find out how they’re making the industry more friendly to women.
Bringing women into the conversation
Micha Choi joined Guardian Capital Advisors in 2020 — in large part because the firm’s leadership was open to backing her idea for a women’s initiative, providing resources for it and allowing her to focus on that alone. Choi, a portfolio manager and recently appointed vice-president, co-founded the Guardian Women initiative in 2021.
She said it was inspired by Anne Maggisano, who founded Women of Burgundy at Burgundy Asset Management (now part of BMO) in 2014. Part of Choi’s motivation was seeing repeated instances of women clients who deferred financial decisions and responsibility to husbands, to their detriment.
“Year after year, I saw women weren’t engaged in the portfolios, or … how things were invested. When anything happens to the husband … they didn’t know where things were, so they were taken advantage of by family members, by children, even by friends, colleagues,” said Choi, who lives and works in Toronto.
Part of the solution is finding different ways to engage and communicate with women clients. For example, women often respond better when investment performance is tied to real-life planning goals. So, rather than talking about a 10% return, put that number in the context of a priority the client has identified, such as helping a child buy a house.
Choi said she listens carefully for the client’s level of comfort with financial terms and concepts as there’s wide variation among women.
Similarly, McNeily said for women clients, it’s important to connect with them on their values and what’s important to them first, rather than leading with numbers.
“I always lead with what are we trying to accomplish from a values perspective, and the portfolio should fit that value,” she said. “It’s not about the portfolio delivering X level of return,” but rather, the return is the tool to achieve the thing the client values most.
Danielle Martin, a senior wealth advisor and portfolio manager who’s been with ScotiaMcLeod for more than 30 years in Toronto, emphasizes that women, who statistically live longer, will have the family’s net worth to manage if their spouse passes away first.
They need to understand “what’s going on, generally speaking, knowing that there’s cash flow there, there’s cash available, that things are set up properly based on asset allocation,” she said.
“The things that tend to appeal to women are, I want to understand what types of products I have, what is considered a growth [asset] and riskier, and what’s considered more conservative, and what’s my balance,” Martin explained. “I find when people can wrap their head around that, there’s less worry about volatility.”
No silly questions
Karen Shea, a senior wealth advisor and portfolio manager who’s been with CIBC Wood Gundy in Ottawa for close to 30 years, said she has long wanted to focus on women, partially because of her own experience growing up.
“My mother always struggled with money, I grew up in a household that lived paycheque to paycheque,” she said. “I knew that there was a better way to manage money, so I educated myself on finding a better way to do that, and now I share this information with my clients.”
It wasn’t until about five years ago, when she had three new female clients with similar negative experiences with money management, that she was really convinced of the need.
One client came to her after losing money in a high-risk company that failed — another advisor had invested her money. “She had no idea it was a high-risk investment or that her investment in the company was now worthless. She didn’t think she needed to ask the questions of the advisor.”
Shea ensures that clients feel comfortable asking questions — more than once, if necessary — and know that there are no silly questions.
She had also initially worried about alienating male clients, but found that hasn’t been the case, with men making up about 40% of her current clients.
That concern, McNeily said, is common.
“In reality, we just want to make sure that women feel heard and valued and communicated with in a way that resonates with them,” McNeily said. “It’s not about alienating our male clients, just about better connecting with [women, who may be] their spouses, their partners, their daughters, their mothers and making sure they feel just included in the conversation.”
A holistic approach
Martin was originally focused on dentists as her client base. But she’s found that her client roster has naturally shifted to women, who find her easy to relate to.
“My natural market is dealing with wealthier women who have a life transition,” she said. “I think what appeals to clients about me is my number of years in the industry, … but also personally, it’s easy for me to have conversations about divorce, … dealing with step kids, all of that kind of real life stuff.”
Many are referrals — from other clients or from Alex Besharat, who recently retired as executive vice-president and head of Canadian wealth management at Scotiabank. Besharat would send clients to her that he felt would be a good fit for her style.
“There are big clients that need and are perceived to want more of a holistic relationship,” she said. In many cases the clients are high-net-worth couples in their 60s, 70s or 80s, where the husband has taken sole responsibility for finances, but wants to know his wife will be OK financially if he passes away first.
Martin recalled a recent such meeting with potential clients, where the wife had put all her trust in her husband, and hadn’t ever written a cheque. “The guy said, ‘My wife’s not interested at all. For 40 years, I’ve been making every decision about money.’”
In such cases, Martin meets with the couple and finds ways to engage the wife by including her in meetings, and reassuring her that she doesn’t need to become an expert.
“I’m not saying that you have to write a cheque tomorrow, but you need to know that you can call me anytime,” Martin recalled telling the wife. “And you’ll be amazed at how much you learn by sitting in [on meetings].”
Choi said she’s also seen younger clients put everything in the husband’s name by default, even when the female partner is a successful professional.
In those cases, she discusses with both partners why they should reconsider, and tells the female client that she can be the “bad guy.” She offers to take the lead in a joint meeting, suggesting that everything should be made joint, or that each spouse should have assets in their own name.
Choi also advises women to check beneficiary information, which may be outdated. One of her clients passed away suddenly, not realizing his brother was still named as beneficiary on his insurance, rather than his daughter.
“The brother, as well meaning as he was, he had a wife who didn’t want to release those assets.”
A big part of Shea’s efforts to empower women is using plain language and translating financial jargon, which can be alienating. She conducts regular educational webinars on topics like different asset classes, budgeting and the use of registered accounts, and while they’re not just aimed at women, she finds the topics and the way they’re delivered resonate with them.
“My mission is to empower, [with] no big investment jargon. I provide straightforward information that everyone can understand.”
Advisors need to be able to take “very complicated information and simplify it and make it so that it’s thorough and true but understandable to the average person,” Martin said. She uses her mom as the barometer. “I’ve always had the notion that if I can’t explain it to my mom, then I shouldn’t be providing these products like derivatives and [more] complicated stuff. … Let’s just stay away,” she said.
‘The perfect time’
Only about 15–20% of advisors in Canada are women, a statistic that hasn’t changed much in years.
Still, Martin said things have changed since her training sessions, when she was the only woman in a class of 35.
McNeily is also optimistic about the future.
“It’s probably a perfect time to help to close those gaps, because there are multiple things happening at the same time,” she said. “We’ve got an aging population. Women live longer. Women will control more wealth. But the industry has also evolved to be more holistic.”
Like one of her mentors once told her, “It’s an evolution, not a revolution, right?”