To change the world, we have to change the world of money

It all started when my dad suddenly died, leaving us in a whirlpool of receipts and bills, along with shock and grief. It took my mum and I, two well-educated women, almost 2 years to get out of this tornado and start to understand everything.

Studies show that women feel just as comfortable with money as men when it comes to everyday matters: budgeting in the household and paying bills. But only about half (52%) dare to invest. And even more - 59% - say they regret not dealing with money anymore.

I only understood the full scope of “being a woman & money” when I was 38. After all, I was primarily an economist, marketing specialist, girlfriend, mother, and not necessarily a “woman”. And money never really seemed that "important", what was happening in my everyday life was much more important.

And to be honest, who really gets up in the morning and thinks: “Today is the day I’m going to take care of my money!”

I can think of millions of other things than struggling with a mess of numbers or going to a boring meeting room for financial advice.

When I speak to women from all over the world, I hear sentences like

• "I don't know where to start."
• "He's better with the finances."
• "I have no time."
• "I'm afraid of losing the money."
• "I don't know enough about investing ..."

61% of young women leave financial decisions to their partners (UBS, 2019) and more than half of the divorced or widowed women experienced a financial shock.

But: If women make 80% of the buying decisions, why do we find it so hard to plan our own future with money?

Is it perhaps because, instead of being a growing figure on a bank account what matters more when it comes to money is what happens with it in life?

I think that's where the woman-money challenge starts. I often find that money is the last thing women think about when they want to move something forward. Or everyday life takes over and they lack time.

Everyone should have easy access to the tools and knowledge to secure her financial future, protect her independence and make a difference in the world if she wishes to do so.

This is not a wish, it is a societal necessity as women risk to run out of money, before they run out of life:

1. Women remain undervalued - the stubborn gender pay gaps, but also choice of less lucrative professions and in many countries unpaid care work - example in Switzerland women deliver 61% of unpaid work men 61% of paid work. That's almost 250 billion francs a year of unpaid work done by women.
2. Women live longer - some 4-5 years on average compared to men. Of course, as a woman you can inherit twice, once from your parents and a second time from your partner, but that alone is often not enough as a pension
3. A different attitude to risk - various studies suggest that women prefer less risky investments, or, like in Switzerland keep their money on saving accounts with very little or no interest rates.

The result? Pay gaps turn into pension gaps - as a result in the UK for example a woman can end up 5x poorer than a man at the age of retirement.

When women invest, they create economic independence, social freedom and change the world.

Women are (statistically) better investors than men or at least equally successful and invest with a positive impact: 84 percent of women want to invest their money sustainably and 7 out of 10 want to invest in companies that promote equality. Similar trends can be observed with millennials of all genders, where according to studies 94% want to invest responsibly.

To change the world, we need to change the world of money

Imagine the scale and speed of change if the power of the female purse - all the money that is currently residing on cash accounts and low interest saving accounts, was deployed towards sustainability and gender equality? Maybe then it would not take another 100 years as the World Economic Forum suggests until things change at scale.

So what would that take?

• Financial education for girls and boys at school very early on - as our money beliefs are formed at the age of 7, why are we not teaching money skills in most countries systematically early on?
• More women in decision making roles, especially in financial services - not as note takers, but as decision makers where new products are created, assets deployed, strategies and funding decided
• Greater transparency in financial products - we don't need "pink" products - but clarity on terminology, easy explanation of costs and returns, getting rid of the jargon would help many people to start investing or to deploy assets in pension funds in line with their values - after all, why is reading a term sheet for a product not as easy yet as reading a food label?
• Quality, independent financial education that builds peoples confidence to take the right decisions for their personal lives and eliminates the fear of investing, for example as an employee benefit
• A rigorous review of the customer experience - empathic financial advise, humans that connect on a personal level and digital experiences that add to convenience for time poor agendas
• Gender data transparency at all levels on pay gaps, pension gaps, workforce equality, customer satisfaction, churn rates - you can't improve what you cannot measure

Simple measures, that would make a pivotal shift towards a more equal and a more sustainable world at scale. But besides what corporates and the financial services industry can do, it is our individual decisions about what we do with our money, that can make a huge difference.

Money alone does not make you happy, but it is a powerful source of security, provides independence, and if women invest, it will change the world. But in the end, the only person that can make it happen is you - you want it, go and get it. It's 2020, there's no better time than now - what are we waiting for?