More Women Enter Wealth Management but Underrepresentation Remains

Women currently represent 28% of the wealth management workforce, according to Fintrx data covering more than 500,000 registered professionals at nationwide wealth management firms. This is compared with 72% representation from men.

There is a “strengthening pipeline,” Fintrx reports, with women currently comprising almost two of every five professionals 20 to 30 years old. However, many of the roles seeing growth remain at the support level. Most women occupy administrative, legal, compliance and operations positions in wealth management, rather than positions where they face clients and generate revenue.

“While it’s encouraging to see that more younger women are entering wealth management, it’s also clear that women remain underrepresented in producing adviser seats and in the most senior executive roles, so there is still meaningful ground to cover,” said Emily Goldman, vice president of data research for Fintrx and co-author of the report, in a statement.

Across the wealth management business, the median age for women is 42, compared with 47 for men.

Although the percentage of women is on par with that of the investment banking industry, compared with other financial service industries such as asset management or family offices, the gender gap within the field is narrower.

For example, in the asset management sector, women make up only 17.9% of the workforce compared with 82.1% of men. In family offices, women make up 26% while men make up 74%.

When it comes to producing advisers—defined by Fintrx as financial professionals who are client-facing and responsible for generating revenue and managing relationships—Fintrx found that only 20% are women, though women account for 26.5% of producing advisers with less than five years of tenure.

Stark gender gaps were highlighted when looking at the exact numbers of producing advisers of both genders at different types of wealth management firms.

At independent RIAs, there were 11,380 women producing advisers vs. 52,605 men. At wirehouses, Fintrx counted 9,481 women in this role vs. 33,297 men, as well as 36,406 women at broker/dealers vs. 136,928 men.

The median age for women in producing adviser roles is 47 compared with 52 for men, the study found.

“Across age, tenure and firm type, women are still underrepresented where revenue and long-term decisions are made,” Goldman noted. “That said, more women are voting with their feet — starting firms and using independence as a way to claim ownership of both the client relationship and the economics — even if parity in producing and senior leadership roles is still a work in progress.”

FINTRX’ study revealed a rise in women-led and founded registered investment advisories.

This report is based on Fintrx’s verified dataset covering RIAs and wealth management professionals across the U.S. All findings reflect the most recent verified data available within the Fintrx platform as of February 19.