How to Keep Female Clients After the Loss of a Spouse

For advisors, learning to ask questions and providing emotional and educational support to overcome some of those generational limitations is invaluable. It is crucial to take it one step at a time, whether that is by sharing what you would do if you were in their shoes or simply listening to their concerns.

Realistically, these women don’t need their advisor to explain how the watch is made; they need to be told the time in the moments when it’s needed.

If advisors want to be students of empathy, they may want to consider looking to their operational support team for assistance. These individuals are most often women and can assist in guiding them through messaging. 

Connecting with female clients is all about slowing down and asking the right questions. 

Accessible Language

One crucial detail in discussing how to communicate with and understand female clients is that financial advisors must practice being more mindful in their word choices. That means a foundation of more approachable, plain English.  

Using language filled with jargon with a woman who is already experiencing an emotional and taxing life event often results in unintentional confusion and intimidation. This is common because women, especially those older than 60, were raised in a world where they were excluded from financial conversations and even credit cards could be secured only in their husbands’ names. 

This background means that women have a different relationship with or approach to financial education than many of their male peers. 

With this in mind, all advisors — both men and women — should aim to de-prioritize the jargon that has become the norm in the wealth management industry and begin to tell stories to illustrate concepts. 

Whether you are looking to make these adjustments as an individual or implement them in an organization, actions like including a client’s wife in estate planning efforts, asking both spouses to be present for an annual financial planning update, practicing an increased sense of empathy and using less jargon while asking more questions will make a world of difference in connecting with and retaining a female client or widow.

Implementing these small changes should effectively lessen the frequency of widows leaving their husbands’ financial advisors and begin to turn the tide on women and wealth.

Teresa J.W. Bailey is a senior wealth strategist and president of Waddell & Associates, a financial advisory firm based in Nashville, Tennessee.