According to a report by the Credit Suisse Research Institute, women now hold 40% of the world's wealth, but invest only a small proportion of their savings in the economy. Demographic change is likely to accentuate this trend, which is beginning to interest the financial sector.
Women hold 40% of the world's wealth
Every year, Credit Suisse Research Institute publishes its Global Wealth Report, a detailed analysis of household wealth worldwide.
In 2018, the Credit Suisse report found that over the course of the 20th century, the percentage of global wealth held by women had grown steadily. Today, women hold 40% of the world's wealth, including non-financial assets.
This progression has been made possible by access to a higher level of education, opening the doors to more senior positions in companies. However, it has also been held back by the persistent wage gap between men and women.
This percentage is a global average, which obviously implies major disparities between regions of the globe. For example, women in Europe and North America have the highest percentage of wealth, in the range of 40-45%, while in India and Africa it's between 20-30%.
In addition, demographic trends are tending to increase this figure, due in particular to the higher life expectancy of women. In the United States, by 2030, women should be in possession of most of the wealth accumulated by the baby-boom generation.
Products tailored to the needs of female customers
Yet women invest just 5% of their savings in the economy, as Paloma Castro Martinez, co-founder of WeInvest, a platform that enables women to "invest more and better", points out. Financial sector initiatives aimed at mobilizing women's savings are still rare, but things could change in the months and years to come.
According to McKinsey, a New York-based strategy consulting firm, wealth management specialists cannot afford to overlook the special efforts they need to make to attract female clients, both to retain existing ones and to attract new ones.
But the challenge for wealth management firms, according to McKinsey, is to avoid projecting a sexist image, while at the same time developing products tailored to the needs of female clients. It's a difficult balance to strike, which may partly explain the scarcity of initiatives in this direction.
However, several studies have demonstrated significant differences between men and women in terms of financial management. In particular, women are more interested in investing in property than in financial savings. Unattracted by risk-taking, they prefer long-term profitable investments to short-term high returns.
These expectations are rarely taken into account by the financial advisory sector, which is accustomed to catering to the wishes of male investors. And yet, according to a study by New York bank Goldman Sachs, women's strategies pay off, as demonstrated by the superior performance of investment funds managed by women on Wall Street in 2020.