It’s no secret that women are finding their niche in financial planning, but their success in that channel is far outstripping more modest gains in other sectors. A few major Canadian mutual fund dealers report that the number of women is almost equal to the number of men in middle and even senior management.

Of the fund dealers surveyed by Investor Executive that release workplace statistics, women comprise not only a significant portion of total employees but of senior management as well. At Regina-based Partners in Planning Financial Group Ltd. , for example, women are 60% of senior management.

And, if the experience of Win-nipeg-based Investors Group Inc. is any indication, the growing numbers aren’t the result of specific efforts to recruit and advance women but of the types of programs companies put into place.

According to Kevin Regan, Investors Group’s executive vice president of financial services, the company has no quota system or affirmative action program for promoting women. But the firm does encourages people to find a work/life balance, and offers good policies involving parental leave and flex-time. For example, a maternity top-up program provides financial support of up to 95% of base salary for a 17-week period. A workday is 7.5 hours but may start between 7:30 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. and end between 3:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.

Other options include: job-sharing; alternate workweek (more hours a day but fewer days a week); and alternate work cycle (working full-time for only part of a year — an employee would work fewer than 12 months in a given year but salary would be averaged out based on the number of months they work in that year and paid over 12 months).

How many people take advantage of job-sharing or part-time work? “Is it hundreds of people?” Regan says. “No.” But he tries to accommodate individual requests as much as possible. “I’ve had people go on sabbatical and return after a year. You want people to feel good about coming into work every day.”

At Investors Group, women make up 47% of the several hundred senior managers. “It’s really an organic phenomenon,” Regan says of the egalitarian statistics.

It was this kind of flexibility that attracted Tina Tehranchian, a certified financial planner and branch manager for Assante Wealth Management (Canada) Ltd. in Richmond Hill, Ont., to the business. And, she says, it is still a key attraction for women entering the industry. “As a career choice for women, it has its pluses and minuses,” says Tehranchian, who is also a chartered life underwriter and chartered financial consultant. “You’re self-employed. You set your own production targets and what you want to achieve.”

For a woman with small children, this career “works fine,” she says, adding that when her son was small, she used to work until 3 p.m., pick him up from school, feed him dinner and then work again from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. every evening.

But she still needed a lot of help from her parents to make it work, because her husband travels a lot.

And that’s the downside, she notes: when advisors are starting out, they need to have the flexibility to be able to visit clients at their homes in the evenings.

Tehranchian believes the regular office hours that a management career at head office offers is attractive to many women, and that could explain why there are increasing numbers of women in senior administrative functions in financial services.

But for those women who choose to work as advisors, they have a natural advantage when dealing with female clients. “Sometimes, young male advisors may not have enough patience,” Tehranchian says. “Women need more explanation.” That’s because they tend to be more conservative investors and ask more questions, especially if they are assuming some risk.

“I don’t mind if the sale is not closed in two meetings,” she says. “It may take four meetings. I always encourage my clients to ask as many questions as they want.”

Some women who want to be successful advisors find getting a certified financial planner designation bolsters their credibility with clients. According to the Financial Planners Standards Council, about one-third of those holding current CFP designations are women.

Lise Andreana, a CFP since 1993, works with Continuum II, a group of four planners in Burlington, Ont., who deal in insurance and mutual funds. She has been a very vocal advocate of encouraging more women to get into the planning profession: “It’s a big switch from the 1980s, when there was a hidden policy not to hire women.”

@page_break@Andreana wonders if some women are intimidated by a career in financial services because they are afraid of dealing in numbers. But, she says, it’s not necessary to be a great mathematician.

“I have great software,” Andreana says. “It’s not about math; it’s about people and their goals.”

Investors Group recruits its talent from three local institutions: University of Winnipeg, University of Manitoba and Red River Community College. Once it has good people, it cultivates them in a “gender-neutral” manner.

The company doesn’t engage in practices that could potentially exclude people, such as holding high-level meetings on the golf course. Regan says all management meetings take place at the firm’s head-office boardroom, and quarterly meetings are held at a local art gallery.

When recruiting women to become advisors, the firm looks at personality, not gender, when getting the “right feet on the street.” That usually means someone who is outgoing and a self-starter.

“It’s not for everyone,” Regan says. “Every individual we recruit, that’s part of what we talk to them about. Part of the trick is that people aren’t surprised by that.” IE