Call to look to female economy for recovery

Their purchasing power has huge potential for boosting economic growth, with women accounting for $20 trillion of global consumer spending per year, Barbara-Ann King, head of Barclays Wealth’s female client group, said.

Assuming “one size fits all” is historically where we’ve gone wrong, said Ms King, who stressed the importance of a more targeted approach towards addressing women in order to engage with that market.

She was speaking to the Yorkshire Post ahead of the female client group’s first seminar in Leeds.

The female client group programme, which has been developed by Barclays Wealth, aims to partner with women to offer them support in financial and wealth matters. It has been launched on the back of the SmartWoman initiative launched in 2010 – a programme focused on financial education.

Ms King, who works with women across the board, from senior women in business, to female entrepreneurs and women who manage the home’s finances or have inherited wealth, said: “The programme still has financial education as its core theme but also looks to bring women from all different networks and backgrounds together to share their experiences and partner with us on their wealth journey.”

She said: “This is an economy, it’s not a diversity initiative, it’s about a market place.

“It’s growing at an exponential rate. The growth of the female economy is 8 per cent year on year, and by 2014 it will have a GDP bigger than that of India and China combined.”

“It is important to get better at addressing women,” she said. “It’s about trying to capture a market. It used to be very non-PC to say women and men were different.”

But Ms King said there are differences between the two genders which should be acknowledged by wealth managers and across all industries.

She said: “We are different in terms in how we allocate and spend time. Women are time constrained. Men are too, but for different reasons.”

A women who is a on a board of directors might also have to pick her children up from school, and might not have a chance to look at her personal finances until late at night for example, she explained.

Ms King said: “Then there are behavioural financial differences, perceived financial skill, risk management for example.

“There’s a difference in perception between men and women. Women have a different approach to risk.

“A lot of this is generalisation and of course, you will find aggressive female traders. But women tend to take much more measured risk, they are more ‘buy and hold’ in their strategy.”

Ms King added: “Marketing has to categorise men and women. For me, it’s about culturally understanding the subtle differences in how women buy products.”

She said: “If we can get financial education right, we will increase confidence and perception of skill so women will invest more.”

Ms King explained that Yorkshire is an area of great economic growth, citing research by Barclays Wealth conducted earlier this year which found there are nearly 44,000 millionaires in Yorkshire and this number is set to grow by 28 per cent by 2020. In the UK there are more female millionaires under the age of 45 than male, she said. Ms King added: “We need more innovation in our industry and women are going to be a big part of that.”

Last week, Ms King, who has developed the programme, was in Leeds to co-host an event, entitled Uncovering the Female Economy. The nationwide seminars are a key part of the programme, which is service-led and focused on education, addressing women and their families, not excluding men, and taking on a “distinct style of female networking”.

Different attitudes

According to recent research, which looked into behavioural finance, taken from the 13th volume of Barclays Wealth Insights report, women do not see themselves as risk takers.

Whilst 49 per cent of men are prepared to take higher risks for higher investment gains, just 31 per cent of women say the same.

Additionally, only 33 per cent of female investors describe themselves as risk takers, compared to 49 per cent of male investors. Female investors are more open to using other people to help them reach financial goals, such as financial planners – 46 per cent, in comparison to 42 per cent of men, according to the research.

Meanwhile, more men prefer delegation than women, the research found, with 35 per cent of male investors finding delegation an effective investment strategy, compared to 30 per cent of female investors.