With most financial services firms placing significant weight on experience during the recruitment process \u2014 and the traditional means of getting experience breaking down \u2014 women who have not previously worked in financial services are drawing on their skills and experiences gained in other careers in order to enter the financial services industry.

Before Judith Cane joined Canada Life Assurance Co. <\/b> as an agent in 1992, she had held various jobs in \u201caccounting, marketing and human resources.\u201d But when her employer downsized the division in which she was working after she had been on the job for only a year, a friend\u2019s brother, who was a sales manager at Canada Life, suggested she sign on with Canada Life as agent. \u201cYou\u2019ll be good at this,\u201d he assured her.

Cane was skeptical at first, put off mostly by the idea of becoming a \u201csalesperson.\u201d The long recruitment process changed her mind, however. In January 1992, Cane attended Canada Life\u2019s sales congress in Toronto. Two things made impressions on her.

\u201cThere were thousands of agents there and I never had to line up to use the washroom,\u201d Cane says. \u201cThere were not a lot of women.\u201d

But what had a more lasting impression were the speakers at the conference \u2014 the top producers \u2014 who shared not only their secrets of self promotion but also their secrets for better serving clients, advising clients as well as preparing and protecting them for the future.

These presentations helped dispel Cane\u2019s impression that she was going to have make the hard sell every time. So, she signed on. It was the social skills she had honed in her previous career \u2014 before she even contemplated a career in insurance or financial planning \u2014 that were infinitely more important than anything else she could have brought to the job.

Cane now runs her own firm in Ottawa, Antara Financial Group<\/b>. Cane focuses exclusively on marketing herself to women. \u201cI do have male clients,\u201d she says. \u201cOften a prospective client will want to bring her husband to our meetings.\u201d

However, her seminars and workshops \u201care exclusively for women.\u201d Along with finance seminars, Cane also runs events just to get women together, such as golfing or her own passion, quilting.

Like Cane, Bev Moir \u2014 now a senior investment advisor at ScotiaMcLeod Inc. <\/b> in Toronto \u2014 started building her book of business 15 years ago from scratch. The former acute-care nurse and hospital administrator made the leap to financial services after 20 years in nursing. It was a case of sinking or swimming, says Moir.

\u201c[The nervousness] just made me work harder,\u201d she says. \u201cOnce I got my feet back under me, I realized how much my wealth of life experience served me.\u201d

Moir thrived on the accountability and relationship with her clients that, in her previous career, she had envied of doctors with their patients. Ultimately, it was her ability to ask the difficult questions and \u201cexpose the tender spots\u201d that made her a really good advisor. Although she \u201cloved\u201d the Canadian securities course, what she really took to was building trusting relationships.

Moir believes that she is better suited to the career she is in now than she was to nursing: \u201cI discovered that I valued my independence over a steady paycheque.\u201d

What sealed the deal, however, were the memories Moir had of her father. \u201cHe had passed up an opportunity to go it alone and it always irked him,\u201d she remembers. She also recalls her father taking her little brother aside to check on their investments \u2014 and part of her wanted to prove that she could to it, too.

Both Cane and Moir admit they perceived math as a barrier to entering the financial services industry. But once they got started, this was no longer the case. \u201cThe technical skills can be taught,\u201d says Cane. Moir recommends carrying a pocket calculator.

Real or perceived math skills never presented a barrier to Victoria Barclay, manager and analyst in Bank of Montreal<\/b>\u2019s risk management group in Toronto. Barclay has a doctorate in physical chemistry and had completed postdoctoral work under the supervision of Nobel laureate John C. Polanyi in 1993.

During the dot-com boom, Barclay made the switch from the academic world to corporate research, developing models and software. \u201cIt was a bucking bronco ride,\u201d she remembers. But in 2001, Barclay not only had to deal with the volatility in the dot-com sector, she lost her infant daughter and her father.

@page_break@\u201cI hit a wall,\u201d she says. \u201cBetter a change than a rest. It was therapeutic to do something completely different.\u201d

Barclay set her sights on the financial markets, despite having no experience. \u201cI figured statistics would be my inroad; I had built computer models of light hitting the facets of salt crystals, which are actually much more complex than the markets.\u201d

Previously, at her small but fast-growing software company, Barclay had learned to get complex points across to programmers and consumers alike. At BMO, it was this ability to explain complex matters in plain language that made up for her lack of industry knowledge.

Although Cane, Moir and Barclay have all been in the financial services industry for a while, Angie Karas of Markham, Ont., is now making the switch from a 25-year career as an information-technology professional into financial services. She is enrolled in Seneca College\u2019s financial services practioner program.

\u201cIn high school, I had to choose between my two favourites \u2014 IT and accounting and finance,\u201d she says, adding that she expects her experience, which ranges from programming to dealing with clients, will set her apart from other advisors.

However, despite being well suited to financial services, starting in the industry at a later point in life does mean that long work hours compete with family life. In 1995, Cane became the first Canada Life agent in the firm\u2019s century-long history to get pregnant. \u201cThree weeks after my son was born,\u201d she says, \u201cI was seeing clients.\u201d

For Moir, a schedule of long hours kept her away from her son \u2014 and was also the final nail in the coffin for her failing marriage.

And when Barclay was studying for her first chartered financial analyst exam, she studied in 20-minute intervals \u201cbecause that was as long as I could buy off a four year old.\u201d

Moir sees four reasons why women don\u2019t get into the industry: the long hours, the notion that it is male-dominated, the impression there is a lot of math and the fact \u201cWe\u2019re in sales.\u201d But those are also where the opportunities lie.\tIE<\/b>






<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Skills gained in previous careers \u2014 such as building relationships and communicating complex facts \u2014 are the keys to success<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3013,3130],"tags":[2430],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325133"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325133"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":362144,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325133\/revisions\/362144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325133"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=325133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}