Advisers believe that research indicating women put more emphasis on building relationships with clients’ families only underlines the importance of ensuring gender balance within the profession.
Health & Protection spoke to a wide range of intermediaries following research from the Embark Group, which indicated female advisers’ place greater emphasis on successful relationship building with client families than their male counterparts.
Doubled female adviser numbers
Debbie Kennedy, CEO of LifeSearch, told Health & Protection the firm has doubled its number of female advisers over the last three years, adding there are now more women in leadership roles at LifeSearch and across the protection industry.
“We know women often drive the family conversation for protection while also typically scoring higher than men in agreeableness, the A in the big five OCEAN [Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism] personality traits,” she said.
“So we could be seeing evidence of biological science matching the reality of performance.
“Overall, I believe the industry is in transition and if we are focused on caring for people’s financial futures then achieving a better balance can only benefit consumers and the industry.”
Better at empathising
Naomi Greatorex, owner of Heath Protection Solutions, believes women are able to empathise better with other women about their concerns for health and family and that has a big impact on how advisers talk to people.
“I always talk to people as if it’s a conversation. I’m not necessarily following a rigid process to begin with. I talk to people in more of a conversation, asking about their family, getting to know people and understanding what their concerns are,” she said.
“I think you need to have the empathy of understanding with other females about the strain of being a mum and raising children from that perspective and talking about women’s health as well.
“As you’re talking to women a lot of it can be asking what they’re worried about and talking about things like fears of breast cancer or ovarian cancer. They’re obviously female illnesses so I find when I talk to women it’s easier to have a more personal conversation because you’re able to talk in a slightly different way and I think men don’t necessarily talk in the same way as women.
“When you talk to women they want to feel really comfortable in order to open up and have a conversation and we’re used to talking to our friends, our mothers, daughters etc. I think if you can bring that into the advice process it makes people feel they want to open up and talk to you,” she added.
Importance of diversity
But Claire Ginnelly, executive committee member of the Association of Medical Insurers and Intermediaries (AMII), said she was not so keen on looking at client outcomes by gender.
“It is great to see such encouraging stats for female advisers but I would rather advisers learn from each other and share best practice,” she said.
“If a female happens to report she is retaining more business from a client’s child when the client dies than a male colleague, they should explore what is leading to this outcome so that others can get the same sort of result. This is about being the best adviser possible and really getting to know your customer.”
Ginnelly adds diversity in the workplace is incredibly important for a number of reasons.
“Not only will it have a positive impact on the culture of an organisation it could also have a positive impact on the success of the organisation, as per the Embark research.
“The organisations which do not have a diverse workplace – including a lack of diversity in the boardroom – are possibly less likely to employee female advisers and if they do, retention may not be as good if female advisers feel they are going to hit a glass ceiling.”
Alan Lakey, owner of CI Expert, said: “I believe that, in general, women are more empathetic than men which is a great trait to have when speaking with potential clients and this may well enable better relationships.
“The main characteristic, which many people lack, is the ability to listen and probe gently which can often uncover unsuspected needs.”
Recruiting for emotional intelligence and lived experience
And Isaac Feiner, owner of Lifepoint Healthcare, says emotional intelligence is an important characteristic he looks for when recruiting advisers – and both men and women can have that.
Feiner emphasised that great relationship building was everything to running a great business, but it just happened to be that his company has a higher percentage of women.
Andrew Wilkinson, director of Moneysworth, revealed that when his firm last recruited, they were looking for someone had some experience of life and of what life can throw at them.
“We ended up finding a really good adviser who had taken time out of her career to look after her children, two of whom had type 1 diabetes, and unsurprisingly with that experience she has had no problems in being able to demonstrate empathy with her clients,” he said.
“Generally, in my life experience I find that women are often at the centre of the family and across generations.
“However, I think it is too much of a generalisation to conclude that women are better than men in establishing and developing relationships. It depends on the individuals involved.”