Two Winnipeg-area entrepreneurs have launched a website to educate women about the world of investing and financial planning.

Golden Girl Finance (www.goldengirlfinance.ca), a financial education website for women, was launched this month by Susan Misner, a wealth-management consultant and manager of business development with Wellington West Capital Inc., and Laura McDonald, a communications and public relations consultant to the financial services and entertainment industries.

Misner, who co-manages more than $400 million in investments at Wellington West, says the site was designed to be a way for the financial services community to reach out to women. It was born out of the recent financial crisis.

Misner says she spoke with many women — during and after the meltdown — who felt the information available in the marketplace wasn’t connected to them.

“I had one meeting with a client who is also a psychiatrist,” Misner says. “She told me she had never before had more women in her office talking about the market and being scared. Isn’t it odd that women have been going to their psychiatrist rather than their financial advisor?”

Misner admits that the banks’ websites do provide quality material. “But I’m not sure they’re connecting with women and getting into the emotional reasons why they need certain financial products and services,” she says. “If you put it in a way that makes sense to women, there will be more [women] customers in the financial arena.”

There’s no question about Golden Girl’s target market. The site is filled with pink tints and flowing fonts. One section, “The Stockettes,” lets members buy and sell assets in a virtual portfolio.

“It’s all written in the Golden Girl voice,” McDonald says. “Women will find humour in the situations we describe and how we relate them to finance.”

McDonald is quick to point out that the site does not set out to “dumb down” financial matters for women. Instead, the website is trying to make things more engaging for them.

“Women are big digital-media consumers,” McDonald says. “They visit three or four sites that they love at the end of each day. We want to be one of those three or four sites. We want [women] to connect with other women on our site. If women go into a meeting feeling that they’re better informed to make decisions, that makes for a better consumer for the products that the financial services community is trying to sell them.”

The site offers an interactive “Ask the Experts” section, in which visitors can pose questions to financial services professionals. The website also has a directory of female financial advisors, accountants, lawyers and insurance advisors.

Misner says the website’s aim is to provide unbiased information and advice. It does not offer “do-it-yourself” investing, nor will it sell products directly.
@page_break@She admits, however, that some business may flow through to her or other professionals who participate in the site.

Another way of engaging wo-men, Misner says, is to connect their investment decisions with their retail choices. For example, many women wear the yoga gear produced by Lululemon Athletica Inc., but may not know that the Vancouver-based firm is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

“Women may not know that a certain company is publicly traded, but they connect with that logo,” Misner says. “We’re trying to connect visually with them.”

McDonald says the website also strives to relate to women in other financial matters. For example, it addresses the issue of women trailing men when it comes to income for the same work. The website has a section entitled “Salary Pact,” in which women can share not only what they earn annually, but what their husbands bring in as well.

“We want to give them real data on what men and women make in salary,” McDonald says. “If you’re at home caring for your kids, how do you know what the going rate is when you go back to work? We’re trying to empower women so when they go into that interview, they have the confidence to ask for more money.”

Misner and McDonald plan to generate revenue through advertising by financial services firms and lifestyle companies looking to reach women. The co-founders also plan to offer sponsored emails to women on the website’s mailing list.

Dan Richards, president of Clientinsights in Toronto, says the Golden Girl website addresses the fact that Canadian investors are demanding more and better information and education. By targeting women, he adds, the website’s message can be more focused.

Says Richards: “Canadians don’t want to have the old ‘command and control’ method, in which an advisor would say, ‘You should do this’ and the client says, ‘Fine, you’re the boss.’ A growing number of Canadians want leadership from their advisors, but they want to play a more active role.”

Golden Girl has a board of advi-sors that includes Charlie Spiring, CEO of Wellington West; Evelyn Jacks, a well-known tax expert; Jennifer Jones, in-house counsel at Wellington West (and skip of the defending champion in Canadian women’s curling); and Lisa Langley, president of Toronto-based International Product & Service Group.

Spiring, the only man on the website’s board of advisors, says Wellington West wanted to be associated with Golden Girl because he feels Misner and McDonald are “on to something” by targeting women. And he believes it could generate leads for the firm’s female brokers.

“The female demographic in the investment world is the fastest-growing [one] out there,” Spiring says. “There are more women involved with money management than ever before. When I started in the industry 29 years ago, women were a very small part of the household investment decision. Now, I would say, they’re involved at least half [of the time].”

IE