SWT Wealth Management
Advertising feature: March 8th marked international women’s day with the theme for this year being #BreakTheBias. It encourages people to call out gender bias, discrimination, and stereotyping. In my own occupation women are very much underrepresented with estimates being that male financial advisers outnumber female advisers six to one since 2005-2019 with the pandemic doing little to improve these numbers (Source: FCA Research 2019). More alarmingly to me though is the number of women who actually leave all their financial planning to their partners and don’t take more of an active interest in their own finances. Quite often I hear female clients tell me that they leave their savings and investment decisions to their partners because they don’t understand them or because they don’t have any interest in them.
Now more than ever, women need to be taking an active interest in their own future financial destiny. Some knowledge is better than no knowledge and in reality, I am quite sure most women do not want to be relying on their partners in retirement to give them money or fund their retirement plans for them.
With the financial advice industry being very male dominated, it may make some women reluctant to seek financial advice. The whole point of financial advice is to help build and preserve wealth and be guided down the right path. You need an adviser you can relate to and someone you can rely on and trust and with a shortage of female advisers in the industry, a lot of women just leave the advice and guidance to their partners.
A woman’s financial journey is very different to that of a man. However, their needs in later life are just the same. Many women retire on much smaller pension pots than their partners. Not just because of the gender pay gap but because women tend to take career breaks to raise families. They then end up paying the price for this in later life by having smaller pension pots in retirement where they missed many years of not funding a pension plan. Statistics show most damage is done to a woman’s finances when she starts a family. However, with careful planning this can be eased with more men and more employers recognising that men want to play a bigger part in the early years of their children’s lives.
Having financial advice can help give you financial independence, which in turn moves you from feeling overwhelmed and concerned by your finances to being in control of your future destiny. With more and more women starting to hold executive positions and having bigger earnings potential, it is vital that they have access to good financial advice and an adviser they can relate to and trust.
I am passionate about ensuring financial advice is available to everyone and anyone. Financial advice comes in all shapes and sizes, and it is not a case of once size fits all. It also does not mean that you need to have large pots of money to invest. It is about getting advice and guidance and starting a journey where you can get the future financial freedom you want to achieve.
The value of an investment with St James’s Place will be directly linked to the performance of the funds you select, and the value can therefore go down as well as up. You may get back less than you invested.
If you are planning to sell shares/assets in the current tax year and they are going to make more than £12,300 in gains, you could sell some before the 5th of April and some after, thus spreading the gain over two tax years and using the CGT allowance for both years. Remember you do not pay CGT on pension funds, ISAs, or your main residence.
The value of an investment with St James’s Place will be directly linked to the performance of the funds you select, and the value can therefore go down as well as up. You may get back less than you invested.
SWT Wealth Management is an Appointed Representative of and represents only St. James’s Place Wealth Management plc (which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority) for the purpose of advising solely on the Group’s wealth management products and services, more details of which are set out on the Group’s website www.sjp.co.uk/products.
SWT Wealth Management is an Appointed Representative of and represents only St. James’s Place Wealth Management plc (which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority) for the purpose of advising solely on the Group’s wealth management products and services, more details of which are set out on the Group’s website www.sjp.co.uk/products.
To find out ways we can help visit: www.swtwealth.co.uk or contact us on 029 2252 0168 or 07946183512