Stephanie Fierman on Women and Financial Services

I attended a breakfast in December 2007 entitled "Marketing to the Female Investor." I was jazzed about this because, in addition to a pretty good expert panel, the core of the event was a review of fresh research on the topic and I was looking forward to getting a sophisticated update on my own experienced-but-possibly rusty notions.

That's not exactly what the audience got.

The research's executive summary declares that "single women are on the rise" (is this the 70's?) and the study confirms that women are living longer, marrying later, get 58% of all undergrad degrees awarded in the US and are opening businesses at 2x the rate of men. Speakers presenting the research still referred to this as the "women's market" - despite the fact that 52% of all US citizens are female - and declared that members of this group have "special needs." The research itself, as in years past, said that 71% believe that financial services marketing is targeted to men, and fewer women then men say they understand financial services products well or extremely well (e.g. mutual funds, stocks, IRAs, trusts). A nervous presenter inadvertently plunged me into a moment of despair when she explained that, while the female respondents may not have an equal understanding of said products, "they are still intelligent."

Good grief. Had nothing changed in 15 years?

When the morning turned to the panel, however, the tone began to change for the better. Most of the panelists' real-life priorities and programs focused on women's changing roles in society, and how these role changes are increasingly non-linear: that women, more so than men, may move back and forth between the core roles of provider and caregiver... and may, as a result, be more or less educated about financial services, may be shopping for products at different times, etc.

So is there a primary segmentation scheme more relevant than gender? Is it more valuable to target based on whether a person of either gender is home taking care of a child or aging parent vs. bringing home the bacon? With roles, education levels and life span all changing, is gender becoming a secondary variable, rather than a primary one?

I sketched out the attached image during the session (and since I can't draw in 3D, I just inserted the "Decision Maker" axis in here so I wouldn't forget about it...):

There's no question that, when observed in as close to real circumstances as possible, men and women tend to have different ways of consuming information, choosing financial advisors and so on. But, right or wrong, "women's marketing" has frequently been housed in retail bank groups focused on special niche populations - and this has not served to create a breakthrough positioning for, well, anyone.

Maybe we've reached a critical mass whereby it's not whether or not one is female or male that should drive marketing communications and sales process design, but rather the role a person plays that dictates her - or his - financial needs, research habits and buying behavior.