Hello, I’m Nicola, and am writing this as I celebrate being made a perma-cat after joining the communications team in the summer. Before starting the job, a journalist I know well made a passing comment about it being good to see a woman being appointed at the lang cat, as her perception was that it seemed a bit blokey. 

She challenged me to see if I could get a Kylie track on the TCWU as an antidote to the thrashy, beardy bands (their words not mine) that Mark P usually posts. I mentioned this in passing to the boss and he told me to crack on and handed me the reins to pen the Update this week. I’ll come back to the Princess of Pop later but just to set the record straight, it’s not at all blokey here and we’ve a really decent mix of incredibly knowledgeable felines who each add their unique print to what we do.

I’ve learnt lots over the past six months, not least the meaning of SOTAN which threw me on my second morning as it was a big topic during my first cat gathering. A frantic Google search threw up ‘the highest hill on the island of Barra Head’ and a Pakistani TV drama. It turns out everyone was referring to our annual State of the Advice Nation report. Since we celebrated International Women’s Day (IWD) on Friday, SOTAN highlighted some interesting numbers on the gender balance within our industry. Women make up just 27% of advice professionals in our survey and only 15% of advisers, but interestingly, the paraplanning profession is shifting the dial. According to our data, women fill 56% of in-house and outsourced paraplanning roles, presenting more opportunities to diversify the sector.

IWD was a nice hook for a stack of gender related stories and again, some touched on the need for more female advisers. Our friend Lois at Money Marketing though covered some Schroders research that suggests advisers are struggling to meet the needs of female clients, with a gap in how they perceive themselves to be delivering for women, compared to how women feel in reality. 

More of a gender balance in any industry is a good thing but I think the issue here is around the need for the right skill set and an awareness of customers and their needs. We all need to be better at having open and honest conversations, so that everyone is on the same page instead of advisers (regardless of their gender) making assumptions about their customers’ finances based on their own expertise. The story also throws up the need to review and tweak processes if needed, such as automatically addressing documentation to the man of the house, unless of course customers have asked for things to be done that way. 

Continuing with the IWD theme, Corporate Adviser ran a piece about a study from My Pension Expert, that showed three in five women in the UK have done no pension planning beyond auto enrolment onto their workplace pension scheme, compared to nearly half of men. It found women contributed less to their pots and were less engaged. 

This week Scottish Widows also talked about the pensions gap with an ‘Alarming’ number of women opting out of pension contributions. Apparently one in ten have opted out of their workplace scheme and just 14% pay into a pension by the age of 22, compared to 19% of men. This is one of the factors driving the pensions gap, along with the fact that women take time out to raise families, leaving them 50% worse off than men by the time they reach 50. 

Whatever you think about IWD, these stories can start conversations and suggest that there’s a huge opportunity to be had amongst advisers and the wider industry, to work with women to address these shortfalls. We all have a part to play in raising awareness of what’s at stake and then working together to see if there are ways of plugging the gap. Starting, if possible, before having children, having conversations around how to manage investing for the future in the early years when childcare costs are highest, and again in the years that follow when finances for some get easier.  Food for thought.

Speaking of children (neat segue), we wanted to share some wonderful news about a new lang kitten. Son of our insight colleague Chris – introducing baby Finn William Bredin who arrived on 28 February (and the cutest excuse for new #merch ever).

#LANGCATLINKS

• Here’s a great blog from fellow cat Natalie about the best bits from the uneventful Spring Budget.
• A good read here from Victoria at Citywire on evidencing ongoing service – the headline will strike a chord with Strava fans.
• Interesting to see GBST [disclosure: one of our clients] has upgraded its Salesforce-based WealthConnect practice management system for advice firms. With the wider launch of Plannr earlier this month, there’s increasing back office technology choice for advisers. Are we about to see some market disruption?
• If you’ve not tuned in yet, the latest Podcat from Tom McPhail is available here. He’s joined by Tom Selby unpicking the Budget.

And last but by no means least, the Princess of Pop. She wouldn’t be my first musical choice if I’m honest, but I’m rising to the challenge of getting her on here and well Love At First Sight is my favourite Kylie tune – play it loud.  Enjoy!