‘You need to want it’: Women in finance speak about their love for their jobs, progress the industry still needs to make

She also sees more women in meeting rooms and at conferences than she did when she first started in the industry eight years ago.

“That’s exciting,” she said.

Tanya van Biesen, president and CEO of VersaFi, an organization committed to accelerating progress for gender equity across the finance sector, has noticed this shift too. She said there are far more women in finance now than when she started working in finance-adjacent roles nearly 30 years ago.

Even still, Robichaud, van Biesen and others say the industry could make further improvements to attract and retain more women, from achieving more representation in senior roles, to offering greater flexibility and a combination of mentorship and sponsorship opportunities. They say this will lead to better business and client outcomes.

“Progress has been made, but more needs to be made,” Robichaud said.

She suggested that there’s room for improvement in terms of mentorship and training opportunities in the sector. In wealth management, for example, she said many advisors are not acknowledged “until their book is big enough.”

“I think large successful teams willing to reach out and give a hand to smaller advisors … [are] going to reap that benefit for years,” she added.

And when that happens, Robichaud stressed that women should be recognized for the value and unique strengths they bring to a team, such as empathy and collaboration skills, rather than being seen as a token minority.

“Shift your mindset and know that a woman is going to actually bring in a whole other perspective and be able to service clients that [men on a team] might not be able to. And they’re going to work hard,” she said.

Caregiving and pay

Performance-based pay makes it harder for women advisors to take parental leave or time off to take care of aging parents, both responsibilities that tend to fall largely on women.

There’s also a risk of losing clients when women take parental leave.

“If you leave for a year, your clients are serviced by someone else, and that can be risky when you come back, so it needs to be addressed that that is difficult,” Robichaud said.

VersaFi recently conducted a cross-sector study of 447 women in Canadian finance, at all career stages. It also identified parental leave as a key pain point.

While women said current parental leave policies generally meet their needs, roughly two-fifths (41%) of respondents said they were worried that taking time off could negatively affect their career opportunities, while others expressed concern about potentially losing their job during their absence.

“For women, I think often, they feel that the off-ramp, like the ramp into parental leave, and then the on-ramp back out of parental leave, those are not well managed,” van Biesen said. “In the [mid-career stage], we still hear lots of instances of women losing clients or opportunities to get staffed on big projects when they come back, and so their career can be stalled or held back as a result.”

Christine Van Cauwenberghe, head of financial planning at IG Wealth Management in Winnipeg, said this is an area that needs to be addressed throughout the industry, but also in Canada’s workforce at large.

“There’s no question that if you are in a client-facing role and you want to take off a significant period of time, it can be challenging for any gender,” Van Cauwenberghe said. She began working at IG 25 years ago, when few women were represented in head office. “We certainly … are looking at different ways to potentially alleviate part of that challenge.”

For example, at IG, she said some younger women are “taking on salaried roles, head office roles, where [they] are choosing to be more of a larger pool environment, where they share corporate clients for a period of time and then take on their own practice a little bit later.” In other cases, they’re opting to work on a larger team, so there’s less pressure when someone goes on parental leave or needs to take time off for other reasons.

“We’re also looking at ways to see if we might be able to corporately support some of the women who have their own practices, and again, maybe have some clients serviced in a different way for a period of time,” Van Cauwenberghe said. “We haven’t necessarily solved every issue, but I think the main thing right now is that it’s a live conversation.”

Another pain point that was identified in the VersaFi study was limited career advancement opportunities. Two-fifths of women reported seeing a clear path to achieving their career ambitions, and nearly half (47%) of women said they expected to be promoted in the next five years.

Van Biesen said this “ambition gap” typically begins at the mid-level of organizations. This is despite the fact that women have outpaced men in terms of educational achievements at different levels, including the university level. More women than men have graduated in Canada for nearly three decades.

“We still have, unfortunately, a real lack of representation of women in the most senior ranks,” she said. Progress has been made in the workplace and boardrooms, but “we are still underrepresented at that C-suite, or even C-suite minus one level. That’s one of the real opportunity areas.”

Sarah Bull, managing partner and portfolio manager with KJH Investors in Toronto, got her start in the industry in 1995. She echoed that the mid-career stage is “where women face the greatest friction,” due to caregiving pressures, a potential confidence gap and limited sponsorship opportunities.

Today, Bull said there are lots of opportunities for young women to break into the industry, compared to when she started and would see “one woman in a crowd of 75.” But she emphasized that women need to be prepared for those opportunities — from investing in their technical skills, to developing real connections with people in the industry that could act as their mentors or sponsors and exhibiting operational confidence.

“Technical skills really matter, but so does judgment, presence and resilience,” she said.

For Bull, even though there were times when she wanted to quit out of self-doubt, she remained resilient. That stemmed from having confidence in herself and her ability, as well as a passion for her work.

“Part of it is you need to want it,” she said. “I always wanted a career and so I just kept my head down and kept going, one foot in front of the other. And I’m so thankful I did.”

That sentiment was echoed by many women in VersaFi’s study, who said they felt motivated to do more than what is normally required for their jobs (85%) and proud to work at their organizations (72%). Most women surveyed also said they felt physically safe (95%) and valued by their organizations (74%).

However, the survey found that some culture gaps persist in areas such as psychological safety, sense of belonging and fair treatment.

Van Biesen said it’s critical that the industry continues to measure the progress being made on different fronts — including culture, retention and advancement — to achieve greater gender balance.

“Right now, we’re seeing some pullback on setting goals and measuring progress against those goals,” she said. “It’s really, really important we continue to measure representation and sense of belonging among women at every level across organizations, because if we don’t, we’ll invariably take our eye off the ball and the gaps we have today will just become bigger.”

Promoting the industry to women

Educating women about opportunities in the industry and the skills they can bring to roles is also essential to boosting gender diversity.

“I think opportunity for women in our sector has never been greater. Opportunity for companies to hire incredibly talented women has never been greater,” van Biesen said. “And I am optimistic that both the women and the organizations will seize on that.”

Currently, only 15–20% of financial advisors in Canada are women. However, women are expected to control the vast majority of assets, and many tend to prefer dealing with women advisors, suggesting a need for more representation in the industry.

Van Cauwenberghe believes there are many parts of the industry “that should be very appealing to women,” but they need to find roles that match their skillset and passion. If you like working with people, financial planning is a great choice.

She also noted that there’s a lot of media reports that suggest AI will kill many jobs in the industry, but “we’re finding that clients actually want more human interaction, because with all the technology out there, they don’t know who or what to trust.”

Bull, meanwhile, said women’s people skills are especially in demand.

“The industry itself has evolved to actually value the strengths of women, … so depth of communication, multi-dimensional approaches,” she said. “The business has evolved to recognize that more advancement of women actually helps, in a lot of ways. It becomes a better culture, because it’s diversity of thought and it’s diversity of leadership.”

Women excel in communication, empathy, and relationship building, Robichaud said, which are all important strengths that can lend themselves to various roles in the sector. With financial planning, specifically, she said there’s immense room for growth and a sense of fulfillment that comes with helping people achieve their goals and dreams.

“If I can shout from the treetops, ‘This is a fabulous job,’ I would,” Robichaud said. “I’m not wearing rose-coloured glasses, … but I love my career and I’m so fortunate I’m in it.”