Why advisers need to rethink how they serve women

The most pressing question for financial advisers this Women’s Month is whether the industry is truly meeting the needs of women as investors. According to Lungile Macuacua, Portfolio Analyst at 1nvest, the answer is ‘not yet’. While women are increasingly participating in investing and seeking professional financial advice, much of the industry still assumes a ‘default investor’ whose financial journey looks very different from that of many South African women. “We already know that women head nearly 40% of South African households,” says Macuacua. “That’s the future of the industry’s growth, not a special-interest segment that advisers serve on the side.”

For advisers, understanding this shift could become one of the biggest competitive advantages of the next decade.

An unconventional route into finance

Macuacua’s own career reflects the changing face of the investment industry. Instead of studying finance, she completed a degree in chemical engineering at the University of Cape Town before joining STANLIB Asset Management as a graduate. Far from being a disadvantage, she believes her engineering background shaped the way she approaches investment management. “Chemical engineering is really about understanding how complex processes behave when the inputs are noisy and the relationships aren’t linear,” she explains. “Markets behave in much the same way.”

She says her engineering training taught her to return to first principles and question assumptions. “I think people from a pure finance background sometimes inherit certain assumptions, whereas engineers are trained to test them. That’s really been my edge in this industry.”

Competence speaks louder than assumptions

Although investment management remains a male-dominated profession globally, Macuacua says the biggest challenge has been overcoming assumptions, not mastering the technical aspects of the job. “As a young black woman, you often walk into a room and you’re immediately read as junior or as the person who’s there to take notes,” she says. “You have to earn technical credibility that others are sometimes handed automatically.”

Rather than allowing those perceptions to define her career, she focused on becoming technically excellent. “When your numbers and your reasoning are aligned, the work argues for you.” She also distinguishes between mentors and sponsors. While mentors provide guidance, sponsors actively advocate for talented professionals when opportunities arise. “The work has to be excellent,” she says. “But you also need people who speak for you when you’re not in the room.”

Women invest differently – and that’s a strength

Recent industry data shows more women are investing directly, while adviser usage among women continues to increase. Macuacua believes these trends reflect different motivations rather than differences in financial capability. “I don’t read this as a capability gap,” she says. Instead, she believes many women approach investing with long-term goals rather than short-term trading opportunities. “Direct share trading is often marketed almost like a competitive sport – pick the winner, beat the market. That framing doesn’t necessarily resonate with how most women approach money.”

Women, she says, are more likely to invest with specific life objectives in mind. “It’s about funding a child’s education or planning for retirement rather than the thrill of the trade.” This is one reason she believes financial advisers remain particularly valuable for female clients. “Working with an adviser creates a plan and a relationship. Products like ETFs also provide a bridge because they offer diversification, transparency and low costs without requiring investors to make concentrated bets on individual companies.”

Financial stress isn’t always a knowledge problem

One of Macuacua’s strongest messages is that advisers should avoid assuming financial stress reflects poor financial literacy. “You can be excellent at managing money and still be deeply stressed,” she says. “The stress usually isn’t about competence. It’s about capacity.”

She points to the realities many South African women face, including interrupted careers, caregiving responsibilities, and single-income households. “No amount of financial literacy closes those structural gaps on its own.” Rather than responding with more education alone, she believes advisers should build financial plans that recognise those realities. “The more useful approach is to take those real constraints seriously and plan around them through resilience, emergency provision and protection.”

Moving beyond the ‘default investor’

Macuacua believes the industry’s biggest blind spot lies in product design and marketing. “Much of the industry still designs around a default investor who has uninterrupted employment, continuous income and retires at around 65.” Women’s financial journeys often look very different.

Career breaks for caregiving, inconsistent contributions and longer life expectancies all influence investment outcomes; yet these realities are not always reflected in product design or advice processes. She also believes advisers should examine their own unconscious biases. “We need to stop reading caution as low ambition or automatically directing conversations to the husband when both partners are present.”

Equally important is measuring whether firms are genuinely serving female clients effectively. “If we scrutinised how well we serve women with the same rigour that we measure investment performance, the gaps would become impossible to ignore.”

Building financial independence

As a young mother whose grandmother participated in South Africa’s liberation struggle, Macuacua sees financial independence as part of a much longer journey. “The freedoms I get to exercise in my career today were fought for by women who had far fewer rights,” she reflects. She hopes her own daughter will inherit not only those freedoms but also the financial confidence to build on them. “My grandmother and mother made room for me. My job is to ensure that my daughter inherits even more.”

For advisers, Macuacua says: “Stop designing for a default client and adjusting for women afterwards. Start building advice around the full range of how people actually earn, invest and live.” Those who do, she argues, will be positioning themselves ahead of where the profession is ultimately heading. As she puts it, “Competence compounds like capital.” Her message for young women goes further: “Show up prepared, let your work be undeniable, and keep putting your hand up for opportunities. The doors will open.”