Deepening your relationships with your women clients will help sustain your business. Women clients, who generally live longer than men, face particular financial challenges and often need special advice.

Helping women make connections between financial issues and other aspects of their lives is key to providing financial advice for women, says Amy D’Aprix, a consultant and life transition expert with BMO Financial Group in Toronto.

“Your money and your life are intricately woven together, so money is not a stand-alone issue,” says D’Aprix, who spoke at the BMO Women and Money workshop in Toronto last week. “It’s especially not a stand-alone issue for women.”

Here are four top issues to address when dealing with your female clients:

1. Working together
Create a lasting client/advisor relationship by collaborating with your female clients on their finances.

Women often feel they are not respected by advisors, says D’Aprix. Yet women are more likely than men to seek advice.

“They want their advisors to help educate them,” she says, but warns against talking down to women. “It’s about being collaborative vs. parental.”

When you are working with a couple of which the man is more involved in the finances, D’Aprix adds, you should encourage the woman partner to take a more active role.

2. Taking charge of their finances
Women need to be prepared to look after their own finances.

The average age of widowhood in Canada is 56, D’Aprix says. Therefore it is likely that your women clients will become completely responsible for their own finances at some point in their lives.

Talk to your female clients about their understanding and level of comfort with their finances, she says, and provide educational materials if necessary.

3. Planning
Since women tend to live longer then men, make sure the retirement plans and estate plans of your female clients are in order.

Women require more retirement savings than their husbands, says D’Aprix, because they are statistically likely to need those funds for a longer period.

Just as women will have to look after their own finances at some point, they will likely have to plan for their own long-term care needs, she adds. So, conversations about insurance are crucial.

4. Providing care
Chances are your women clients will at some point become caregivers for aging relatives. According to the Bethesda, Md.-based National Alliance for Caregiving, 66% of caregivers in the U.S are women (that trend is similar in Canada).

Talk to your women clients about the consequences of being a primary caregiver.

Clients often forget that there are financial implications for the person providing the care as well as the person being cared for, D’Aprix says. It’s important to highlight those implications, such as lost time from work or helping to pay for a long-term care facility.

IE