Two Canadian advisors say the industry mistakes a slower decision process for lower risk appetite among high-net-worth women clients
Women investors rank growing their wealth as their number one priority. The advisors surveyed alongside them rank it eighth, and put preserving wealth first.
Wealth Professional reported that 45 percent of women with US$10m or more in assets work with no financial advisor and that 35 percent of advised women plan to change firms within two years, based on BlackRock’s inaugural Future of Wealth research of affluent and high-net-worth women investors and financial advisors in the US.
Wealth Professional put three questions about that finding to two Canadian advisors.
Why advisors read women as protective
Asked why advisors read women clients as wanting to protect wealth rather than grow it, Tina Tehranchian C.M., senior wealth advisor at CI Assante Wealth Management Ltd., pointed to how women reach a decision rather than what they want from it.
“Women often need a lot of information before they commit to a strategy. This does not mean that they are more concerned about preserving wealth or that they are more conservative than men,” Tehranchian said in an email to Wealth Professional.
Cassandra Cross, regional director, private wealth and client relationship manager at Nicola Wealth, traced the assumption back to the subjects the industry has historically attached to women and money.
The industry has historically associated women with conservative investment preferences, Cross told Wealth Professional in an email, perhaps because discussions about women and wealth often centre on financial security, retirement, widowhood, or other major life transitions.
Through careers, entrepreneurship, or investments, women are “increasingly the creators and decision-makers behind significant wealth,” Cross said.
Career earnings are the main source of women’s wealth in the BlackRock research, cited by nearly 80 percent of female respondents.
In the same BlackRock research, equity compensation rises to the third most common source among high-net-worth women, cited by over 40 percent.
What Canadian advisors see in their own books
On how the findings compare with her own client base, Tehranchian said the variable is literacy, not appetite.
“My female clients get more confident about their investment decisions the more their financial literacy improves,” she said.
She said advisors should acknowledge the intelligence of their female clients, because limited knowledge of investment products does not indicate limited intelligence.
Cross told Wealth Professional that, in her experience working with affluent women in Canada, the desire to preserve wealth and the ambition to grow it are “not mutually exclusive.”
Some prefer portfolios that generate predictable cash flow, she said, which does not signal a preference for conservative investing.
The Canadian backdrop to those client conversations is an earnings gap that has narrowed without closing.
Women aged 25 to 54 working full-time or part-time earned 89 cents for every dollar earned by a man in 2025, according to Women and Gender Equality Canada.
In 2022, senior women earned 26 percent less than senior men, down from 34 percent in 1976.
Canadian women hold less wealth than men in every province, in work led by Maude Pugliese of the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), who holds the Canada Research Chair in Family Financial Experiences and Wealth Inequality.
Pugliese’s team found the gap stays hidden because Statistics Canada records assets and debts for the household rather than for each partner.
What the gap costs
Asked what the misread costs an advisor who does not close it, Tehranchian answered in retention terms.
Tehranchian said this “can result in lack of trust” and the loss of the client.
She said many female clients change advisors after the death of a partner because the advisor had a relationship only with the partner.
Tehranchian also hears complaints from women who feel their advisor does not take them seriously and who avoid meetings because they feel they know too little about investment concepts.
Cross said advisors risk making assumptions “rather than asking the right questions.”
She said underestimating a client’s ambitions or investment sophistication can lead to portfolios and financial plans that do not reflect what the client is trying to achieve.
“Ultimately, women don’t necessarily want less risk; they want risk that is intentional, understood and aligned with their goals,” Cross said.
