Why Women Leave Financial Advisors

A total of 70% of women change financial advisors after the death of their spouse or divorce, according to Julie Barker-Merz, President of BMO Investorline and Head of Direct Investing at BMO.

BMO has been talking to their financial advisors’ clients to ascertain why, and if there is a gender issue around client interaction.

Why the Relationship Breaks at the Worst Moment

The timing in that statistic is telling. A death or a divorce is when a person most needs steady financial advice, and it’s exactly when so many women walk away from the advisor the household already had.

One likely reason is that the relationship often wasn’t really theirs. In many couples, one partner deals with the advisor while the other is copied on statements or sits quietly in meetings. If the advisor spent years talking mostly to one spouse, the other may feel like a stranger when the file passes to them, and a stranger is easy to leave.

A loss or a separation also forces a fresh look at everything. Someone sorting out an estate or dividing assets is reviewing every account and every fee, often for the first time. If the advisor never made an effort to understand their goals, that review is when it shows.

Women Outlive Men, and Inherit the Decisions

Demographics make this more than a niche concern. Statistics Canada put life expectancy at birth at 83.9 years for females and 79.5 years for males in 2023. At age 65, women could expect to live another 22.2 years, against 19.6 for men.

That gap means many married women will spend years managing household finances alone after a spouse dies. Assets built up by a couple, including pensions, registered accounts and investments, often end up in a woman’s name and under her control.

A Growing Share of Canada’s Wealth

In 2019, a CIBC study estimated that Canadian women directly controlled about $2.2 trillion in financial assets, not counting the family home, and that this would rise to $3.8 trillion, or a third of financial assets in Canada, by 2028. The same research found 41% of women had full control over their money.

CIBC economist Katherine Judge linked the trend to women staying single longer and outliving their partners. “What we do see is that women are staying single longer and outliving men, so married women in particular are outliving their spouses by about six years so they’re taking more of a leadership role in managing that wealth,” she said, as reported by CBC News.

Judge said the wealth management profession needs to rethink how it gives investment advice to women. Women tend to have less confidence as investors, she said, and as a result often don’t achieve the growth they could. “More work needs to be done equalizing the figures between men and women,” Judge said, adding that a better understanding of women’s “financial journey” is needed.

The survey behind those control figures was conducted online with 4,591 randomly selected Canadian adults in late 2018. It’s a reminder that the women an advisor may lose after a death or divorce are, more and more, the people making the decisions about a household’s money.

What Advisors Can Do Differently

The practical lesson for advisors is to build the relationship with both partners long before anything goes wrong. That means inviting both to meetings, directing questions to both, and making sure each understands the plan well enough to carry it on alone.

It also means asking what each person actually wants, rather than assuming one set of goals covers the household. Retirement, giving, family support and risk tolerance can look different to each partner, and an advisor who has heard both views is far better placed when one of them is left making the decisions.

For clients, the takeaway is the mirror image. If you’re not the partner who usually deals with the advisor, ask to be included now. Knowing who manages your money, what you own and what the plan is turns a difficult moment into a choice you make with confidence, rather than one forced on you.