In her typically blunt style, Sallie Krawcheck delivered the lunchtime keynote at Morningstar’s Investment Conference in Chicago late last month, imploring attendees to focus on women not as simply another niche market, but as “the largest opportunity for the financial services industry.”
Krawcheck, former president of the Global Wealth and Investment Management division of Bank of America and current chair of Ellevate Network and Ellevate Asset Management, began by noting a glaring contradiction.
“We are the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, but we also have a $14 trillion retirement savings gap,” she said. “It’s so scary, so terrifying, that we’ve stopped talking about it.”
The Center for Innovation, a technology-oriented think tank, estimates that women control $5 trillion individually and another $6 trillion with a spouse or partner, she added. Their assets are growing faster than men and women will soon outpace men as new millionaire, which means the retirement crisis is largely a female crisis.
“Women have two-thirds the assets of men yet live six to eight years longer than men. Fully 80%of men die married, while 80% of women die single,” she said before joking, “This is not to bash men. I love middle-aged white men. I was married to a bunch of them, but men, you will be dead and we will be left with this problem.”
The solution? Krawcheck provided four suggestions:
- Increase the economic engagement of women
- Have women stay in the workforce for longer
- Close the wage gap
- Promote more women to senior level positions.
“A large part of post-World War Two economic growth was driven by women entering the workforce,” she concluded. “It’s a testament to the power of diversity that diverse teams outperform more capable and smarter peers.”
With more than 20 years serving financial markets, John Sullivan is the former editor-in-chief of Investment Advisor magazine and retirement editor of ThinkAdvisor.com. Sullivan is also the former editor of Boomer Market Advisor and Bank Advisor magazines, and has a background in the insurance and investment industries in addition to his journalism roots.
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