Unlocking Women's Wealth: An Interview With Mara Harvey

Mara Harvey is the Head of Client Services, Global Wealth Management at UBS, where she founded and led a global program to better serve female clients and build the organisation’s capacity for gender-smart investment. She spoke to GenderSmart about what it takes to bring about real transformation within a large organisation, better data, and why unlocking women’s wealth is critical to the success of any financial institution. 

What were the major turning points that led UBS to start thinking smarter about gender?

In 2012, I was asked to take the lead for our billionaires initiative across Europe. I became acutely aware that all our efforts focused on the male family members. Client advisors generally felt that the women had either married into the wealth, inherited the wealth, or weren't very financially knowledgeable. We realised we were missing a huge business opportunity. This was not about a bit of pink marketing; we needed to shift the entire value chain of the business to appeal equally to female clients. It's easier said than done. All too often these initiatives emerge as marketing efforts, but not as a full value chain transformation effort.

How did some of the early conversations with stakeholders go?

Our journey was a very long one. First we had to convince senior management to allocate some funds to test some ideas and understand what female clients wanted. With those proof points and a lot of research, we could then develop a really robust business plan. That was essential: you can't convince anybody of anything without hardwired figures. We could now prove just how much adding a gender lens would move the needle on business. If women's wealth is doubling every decade, how much of our net new money every year would have to come from female clients so as not to lose market share? We showed the management team at the time the need to almost double growth targets. That was a wake up call, and we then got the support to drive a global transformation program.

What have been the major moments of learning and insight?

“It might sound obvious and yet, it took us 18 months to even know what our market share was. If you’re not measuring it, you’re certainly not capturing the full market opportunity”

My biggest lesson is that gender needs to be anchored at the very top of the organisation and span the entire value chain. That is the advice I would give to anybody who is trying to transform their business with a gender lens. The second thing is data. It might sound obvious and yet, it took us 18 months to even know what our market share was. If you're not measuring it, you're certainly not capturing the full market opportunity out there.

How did you shift your strategy to target more female clients?

We started by telling the client advisors, for every man you serve if you just ask yourself, 'Where are the women?' you will see how many new opportunities suddenly open up. Then we got feedback along the lines of "Well, this is great. But if I've been serving a man for 10 years, and I suddenly ask if I can speak to his wife I'm going to look like an idiot". So it was important to engage the rest of the bank in creative thinking around how to empower the front office. Another step was to debias all of our imagery so it didn’t subtly exclude women. These micro biases are very pervasive.

To what extent have prospective female clients been conditioned to believe that it's not their place to take an active role in managing the money? Part of the work is outreach, but then some of the work has to be on their side.

Absolutely, this was part of the educational journey. One of the key pieces of research that we published showed how the pay gap influences the wealth gap over a lifetime. Imagine that a professional woman who's been working 20 years has a pay gap of 10%. Then start factoring in maternity leave or parental care, and the fact that women are going to live longer, so their wealth needs to last longer. And if you factor in that women have a lower risk appetite, what is the cumulative impact of all of that? The results were so shocking that the Chief Investment Officer's team sat on the models for three days because they thought they were wrong. The 10% pay gap can lead to 40% wealth gap. There's a material risk that women run out of money before they run out of life. That was what we used to drive that external awareness and say to women, you can't afford not to be involved in your finances.

In addition to increasing the number of female clients, is there also work you do to ensure that the actual investments have a gender lens?

This was one of the opportunities identified as we were building out our offering.  Female clients should be able to leverage all of the asset classes and products that are already available, however, it did become apparent that when you wanted to look at gender lens investing and tilt a client's portfolio towards companies that do well on gender, there was nothing that went beyond the number of women on the board of directors. That’s too superficial when you’re trying to drive deep transformational change. So we worked with Equileap to produce the first comprehensive index and create an ETF looking at 39 criteria across a company’s practices and policies. That launched in January 2018.

When there's pushback against gender lens strategies or products, what are the reasons given?

“...there was nothing that went beyond the number of women on the board of directors. That’s too superficial when you’re trying to drive deep transformational change”

I haven't come across a specific reason. In the past there has been concern over the returns expectations, but I think it has been more a question of "I've already got the whole lot of other things, I don't need this too" - it was considered a ‘nice to have’. Today, that narrative has shifted. Sustainable investments more broadly, including themes such as gender diversity, have become mainstream and demonstrated that they can replace, and deliver returns comparable with, conventional investment approaches.  During the public health crisis in 2020 many sustainable investing (SI) strategies even outperformed conventional equivalents, while empirical research points to systematic correlation between some factors such as good management of ESG issues and corporate financial performance. So whether you look at gender lens investing from the perspective that diversity makes for better business, or better fund management, or a more sustainable portfolio, there is greater potential to build a gender lens into investments than ever before.

Which other organisational barriers and challenges did you have to overcome?

I think one of the barriers is really fluctuation in leadership, and how much of a priority gender or intersectionality is at the top. Sometimes it’s cyclical. If the organisation is doing well, there is time or capacity for those topics. If the organisation is under cost pressure, they can tend to really fall off the strategic agenda. The only thing you can do is continue to show the data, continue to show the opportunity.  

What other external factors have either helped or hindered the work you're doing?

Six to nine months after we launched our initiatives, ‘Me Too' happened. That really sparked industry debate. I think Black Lives Matter is having the same effect at the moment, shining a spotlight on one of the biggest weaknesses in the financial industry. If gender diversity was like a sore thumb, there’s an even longer way to go on intersectionality and racial diversity. The social fabric of society has shifted to the point that these topics cannot be ignored. We had an investor who said, it's nice that you've got a gender balance sheet, but the day you have  gender balance and racial balance I'll be even happier. So investors are demanding it. I'm not saying everybody, of course, but once -clients ask, organisations need to rise to the challenge. 

Absolutely. And how are you measuring progress?

That is a very tricky question to answer. On the one hand, it's simple because we can put a gender split on all of our financials. Between our ability to actually do it technically, and our ability to execute in terms of capacity - which often requires manual reconciliation of data - it's not so easy. And there is the additional complexity of even capturing intersectional and racial data. 

I think the only way we can progress on this is to continue to demand more transparency, including on our products. It's quite astounding by how much data we have, but how little data we actually are capable of using for these targeted efforts. 

What's the next step?

One of the things that we're working on is how can we play a stronger role in facilitating female entrepreneurship, which is not an obvious play because we are not in the startup or venture space, but all of these female-led startups have one thing in common, and that is they lack access to capital. And if there's one thing we do have as a bank, it's access to capital, or access to people who can provide capital. So it's all about the connectivity that we can create.

In the context of our women's wealth program, there is much work to be done in partnering more broadly and sparking industry debate. Both this and women’s access to capital are problems that the entire industry needs to come together on to solve.

image: Marcos Paulo Prado on Unsplash