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My name is Jennie Hancock. I've been in the financial services industry for 29 years, going on for 30. The industry has changed a lot in 29 years, I can tell you that. But what hasn't changed, sadly, is the number of women joining the industry. At the moment we're sitting at around 30% female financial advisors. In my opinion, women have a distinct advantage over men - in that when we call for an appointment - by and large, we'll get the appointment because men are always curious to see what we look like and women are never threatened by us. So I think we have that as an advantage. That's the first thing.

Secondly, I think women are more collaborative. They're more empathetic. We tend to listen better than men, no disrespect to men, they are very successful as well. But I think it goes back to a little bit of history whereby women weren't really the forerunner or the breadwinner per say. And I think the world has changed a huge amount. You only have to look at how many women are bringing up children by themselves. You know, we're looking at around about 30%-35% of single parents, primarily females, now bringing up the future of our leaders of the country.

So what is it that woman actually want from their financial advisor? In my opinion, they want someone they can trust, someone that's going to respond to them and someone that's honest. It's all very well and good having questions, but if those questions aren't being addressed clearly and honestly, then you can end up in a really bad situation if you take the wrong investment or you don't set up a discretionary trust properly or whatever that you know the case may be.

Women want to educate their children. They want to pay their bills. They want to make sure that they can plan for retirement. The sad fact in South Africa, even after my 30 years in the industry, is that only 15% of South African women have their own retirement plan. If I had R1 for every time a woman said to me, “when my husband dies, I'm taking care of” I could probably have retired already. What always astounds me about relationships and husbands and wives is they share so much of their lives together - their intimacy everything - But they often don't share the finances; and it's amazing how many women are left up in the air when their husbands have a car accident; he's now dead; she thinks she's taken care of and she becomes becomes an informed widow as opposed to being an informed wife. It's better to know upfront where you stand in your finances. So I believe that every woman who should have her own retirement plan, her own medical aid. She should have her own savings plan. You don't need joint accounts. Actually, in my opinion, you need your own.

So your foundation is always your risk. Medical aid, income protection, life cover, disability cover, severe illness. Severe illness is such a big one in our lifestyle today, especially with women getting breast cancer younger and younger. It's quite amazing, out of the claims that I've had within my own client base for cancer, they've all been breast cancer for the woman, and they were all below the age of 50. So it it's prevalent.

I'll tell you a short story. When I joined the industry, we all join in on project 100. So you get in touch with all the people you know and – you’re bright eyed and bushy tailed - and off you go. I went to see an older friend of mine who had nothing. Eventually she took a R200 a month RA with me - 30 odd years ago. And that's all she ever did. It went through the escalations and when we matured that RA a few years ago, she had saved nearly R1 million - and that's all she had. I didn't know at the time when I sold her the RA, but she came back and said to me when she matured it, “Jen, the only reason I took the RA all those years ago. Was to stop you bugging me.”

Sometimes persistency is all you need. As people we give up too soon. “No”, isn't always a “no”, sometimes it's just a “not now”. You can walk away before you've actually helped the client get to where they need to get to.

The other thing we forget about being confident women is our versatility. How we can work around different personality styles and how we seem to be better on the phone, there I said it, that men because we're not really scared of the phone. Women like to talk, we're the communicators. Men often see the phone as an adversary as opposed to a friend.

Watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/QQqBaIgSJU8