Making More Room for Women in Financial Planning
When Brittney Castro, CFP? started her financial planning career, she represented three minority groups in our profession. A 22-year-old Hispanic woman, Brittney didn’t look like many other financial advisors, who were older, predominantly white and mostly male. She knew she wanted to start her own financial planning firm, but first she had to overcome a few barriers that aspiring female entrepreneurs commonly face.
“The truth is, it is hard for women to get in the industry and start their own financial firms, given the roles of being a mother and more,” Brittney says. “But it is possible.”
Brittney launched her own RIA firm, Financially Wise, in 2013. Now, as a spokesperson for CFP Board’s “I am a CFP? Pro” campaign and a CFP Board Ambassador, she helps to spread the word about the many benefits of financial planning careers and how they can be a good fit for women.
“I think this is such a great field for women because we help people, and naturally, we are the planners and the ones to take care of people. This is just taking care of them in the money department,” she says.
Unfortunately, there is a shortage of women in financial planning — women comprise a little less than one quarter of all CFP? professionals. Our landmark 2013 white paper, Making More Room for Women in the Financial Planning Profession, identified several key reasons why this is the case, ranging from a lack of awareness and misperceptions of financial planning among women to gender discrimination and bias in the workplace.
While many of these challenges remain in place today, our profession has begun moving the needle through the CFP Board Center for Financial Planning’s innovative programs and partnerships.
Our Women’s Initiative (WIN) has been dedicated to attracting more women to the financial planning profession for nearly 10 years. Led by a group of experts in the areas of women’s issues, diversity, and recruitment, as well as leaders from financial planning and advisory firms and CFP Board Registered Programs, WIN has implemented a number of programs to address the under-representation of women in the financial planner workforce.
Chief among them is the WIN Advocate network. This group of more than 550 CFP? professionals works in numerous ways to educate women and girls about financial planning careers. They highlight the flexibility, growth potential and opportunities to make a difference in people’s lives that financial planning careers provide. WIN Advocates also support the professional development of their peers, serving as mentors, speaking at conferences, and offering their guidance through webinars and other online events. Over the next few months, for example, WIN will host virtual “Ask the Expert” sessions through our Candidate Forum on topics including:
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Our popular CFP Board Mentor Program also originated from WIN. It started as the WIN-to-WIN Mentorship Program, which paired women pursuing CFP? certification with CFP? professionals who guided them through the certification process. Inspired by that program’s early success, we expanded our mentorship offerings to any aspiring CFP? professional, with options to match mentees with mentors based on race, ethnicity and gender. With more than 3,700 mentor-mentee engagements to date, this program is helping increase the number of diverse financial planners with CFP? certification.
The successes of these and other programs continue to grow. We are proud that CFP Board has steadily grown the number of female CFP? professionals every year since 2016. By the end of 2021, the number of female CFP? professionals totaled 21,504 — an increase of about 4% over 2020 and a new all-time high. We celebrate this milestone as we mark Women’s History Month and honor the countless contributions women have made to our profession.
Still, there is much work to be done, which means we must continue working to diversify and strengthen the financial planning talent pipeline.
As Brittney shared with us, “When you can see others doing something, it becomes more possible.”
The more women we bring into the profession and encourage to become CFP? professionals, the more will follow, and the more financial advisory firms and clients will benefit from their expertise and counsel.