WEALTH MANAGMENT
Agriculture study of how households with children spend money looked at expenses from 1960 to 2015 and found that while everything got cheaper , the only categories that went up were childcare and health care , which are also the expenses women disproportionately pay .”
And the disproportion doesn ’ t stop there . According to research carried out by Vrinda Gupta , CEO of Sequin – the first debit card to be launched in the US that specifically builds credit for women , credit options are also limited – diminishing borrowing power for women .
Gupta , who has extensive experience in the financial services industry , only realised this fundamental system flaw existed after she herself was caught out by it . She explains , “ I worked at Visa launching popular credit cards , but when I applied for the credit card I helped launch , the Chase Sapphire Reserve — I was rejected .
“ That was the moment I noticed a major flaw in the credit system . I looked at Visa data and I saw that 70 % of young women , like me , were spending on debit cards or on credit cards that were in other people ’ s names , which means they weren ’ t building their own credit .
“ I learned that the credit system is built on bias . Even though women are historically better to lend to than men , credit cards are still designed to reward the way men spend money , putting women at a further disadvantage . Women are reporting negative experiences with credit , which is directly related to access to opportunity .”
McCruden believes there is much to be done , but that the rewards of addressing the imbalance will be great .
She says , “ Anytime you have a diverse group of people around the table , it ’ s much easier to be innovative and creative . How do we reinvent the model versus recreate it digitally ?
“ First , the dominant wealth management business model continues to be to earn a percentage of the assets under management accumulated from clients . This incentivises behaviour to accumulate as many assets as possible from clients and hold on to them for as long as possible .”
She continues , “ For someone caring for an aging parent , this could be problematic since she is likely spending some time out of the workforce to care for that loved one , and therefore unable to accumulate at the same rate . Second , the industry still treats women as a homogeneous group and through a marketing lens rather than from a business growth and revenue point of view .”
McCruden notes , “ Finally , women assess financial performance differently from men . While men on average look at performance relative to a market-based benchmark ,
Diversity and equality solutions Nobody can deny that the space isn ’ t changing and that such a seismic shift to accommodate women equally , has been , and continues to be a challenge .