Advisor Speaks Out on Industry's Treatment of Women

“Women in finance have the greatest pay disparity of any industry in the United States. They’re paid 54 cents for every dollar a man is paid,” according to Bridget Venus Grimes, founder and president of WealthChoice financial planners and finalist in ThinkAdvisor’s 2022 LUMINARIES awards in the category of thought leadership and education, in an interview with ThinkAdvisor.

If you’d like to know why women are failing to stay in the industry, despite more female advisors now entering the ranks, the pay gap is likely the top reason.

“It’s attrition,” Grimes says. Women “don’t get paid what they should,” have inflexible work hours, are unable “to serve [female] clients the way they want to” and lack leaders and mentors, argues the outspoken RIA whose client base focuses on breadwinner women professionals.

Executive women need to have plans built “around their profession” to “grow their career[s],” maintains Grimes. “But our industry typically doesn’t focus on that stuff.”

She is part of a new mastermind group whose goal is “figuring out how to keep women advisors in the industry,” she explains.

A popular speaker and finalist in the 2022 ThinkAdvisor LUMINARIES awards for thought leadership and education, Grimes has co-hosted the Financial Planning Association’s Women & Finance Knowledge Circle and frequently speaks to XY Planning Network advisors and at FPA events.

She founded her practice in 2016 after working two frustrating years at Morgan Stanley, where the “commission-based investment focus” wasn’t compatible with her idea of financial planning, and spent five years at an RIA, where, she says, as “a very high revenue-producing advisor,” she craved advancement.

But the man at the helm labeled her “too ambitious” and “too aggressive.”

That was enough for Grimes to realize she needed to run her own shop and in San Diego launched the 100% virtual WealthChoice. At present, with a national client base, she is managing assets of $70 million.

As co-founder of Equita Financial Network for women-led financial planning firms, she leverages scale to offer a platform of services required to run a planning practice, including professional investment management services.

She also helps female advisors with her WealthChoice Community, combining education, support and networking. It features guest speakers discussing topics important to women.

ThinkAdvisor recently interviewed Grimes, who spoke by phone from Arizona, where she resides.

When the conversation pivoted to the book she authored, “Corner Office Choices: The Executive Woman’s Guide to Financial Freedom” (Lioncrest Publishing, 2018), she spoke of “four derailers” that block women from reaching financial security.

In the interview, she names all four serious impediments.

Here are excerpts from our chat.

THINKADVISOR: “Traditional financial planning has failed female executives and professionals by ignoring the risks and challenges that often wreak havoc in their lives,” your firm’s website states. Please elaborate.

BRIDGET VENUS GRIMES: This industry is about money. But I think you provide better work for your clients if you step back and say: This industry is about clients.

Firms don’t allow for the time that’s needed to help women clients come up with solutions. At my prior firm, we’d do a financial plan and never go back to it. All that you focused on moving forward was investment management.

But life changes all the time. You have to be constantly checking in. The way the industry tends to work is that there’s no time for that.

What’s the biggest challenge for female advisors today?

Pay disparity: Women in finance have the greatest pay disparity of any industry in the United States. They’re paid 54 cents for every dollar a man is paid.

Another challenge is lack of [scheduling] flexibility in the role of financial advisor. Most planning firms don’t allow you to work from home or to carve out time you need for your family.

And we have very few women leaders in the industry. We need them.

Why aren’t there more female advisors?

Because of attrition.

The great news is that we have more women taking the [CFP] test. But what we don’t have is women staying in the industry.

I just joined a mastermind group, the entire purpose of which is to figure out how to keep women in the industry.

The goal is: How to move the needle for women.

Cary Carbonaro [CFP and senior vice president of Advisors Capital Management] is spearheading the launch of this group of women.

She recently wrote an article on the state of women in the industry, and it was damning.

How has the industry changed for women since your first job on Wall Street, with a hedge fund, in 1987?

It really hasn’t changed much. That’s why we’re trying go figure out how to help move this ship that hasn’t done anything. It hasn’t moved very much in decades.

It’s a great industry for women, but they aren’t staying because they don’t get paid what they should; it’s very hard to [tend to] a family if you have an inflexible employer; you’re not necessarily able to serve clients the way you want to; and there’s nobody ahead of us to be leaders and mentors.

What distinguishes your client niche?