Guest Columnist Kristan N. Wojnar

I am curious, where does the quote “Upward of 70% of widows change financial advisors within a few months to a year after their spouse dies. Why? Once again, because the relationship does not exist.” actually come from? I continue to hear this quoted but the advisors I speak too say this is not the case. While they do lose some clients, men and women, it is not as large as this makes it out to be. Can you state where this statistic is coming from? Thanks!

Tiger,

I think you are right to be skeptical about that. It may be the advisor equivalent of urban myth. Still, I’m guessing that there is truth to it based on one small sample. I know that when my dad died, my mother moved her account — albeit two years later.

Brooke

She’s the boss: Keeping assets means keeping the power of the family matriarch fully in focus

Kristan N. Wojnar: The wife may not wait until her husband dies to switch advisors.

women

succession planning

practice management. Kristan Wojnar

The RIA business is many good things but integrated from a gender standpoint is not one of them. This is not so great. Women are the majority of humanity and they have an asset-building strategy that can't be beat. Women outlive their beer-and-steak mates and end up with big estates. But today's women have too another strategy -- pursuing wealth in the workplace. Yet when they go to find fellow women to talk all this through with, they don't readily find them. 

Companies big and small have for decades fallen over themselves to say that they have women's initiatives but I can't think of one that has amounted to much. But there are stories-- dozens or hundreds -- of them about women exerting their influence on this business and we are starting to collect them. It's a starting place -- documenting the ground being covered by women in the form of engaging tales graphically depicted by the physiognomy of the fairer sex.

Women of Wealth Management

The woman who sits quietly and looks bored at meetings can arrange one of her own with the kids who will inherit the family fortune

She’s the boss: Keeping assets means keeping the power of the family matriarch fully in focus

Tiger Booker

Brooke Southall

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