Accelerating change to close the gender investing gap
With our Yes She Can campaign, we set out to understand women’s attitudes to investing. Now a sustainable finance initiative, underpinned by powerful insights, our research reveals how financial services organisations can connect with female investors – and has given us a blueprint for engaging any ‘hard to reach’ audiences
How do we tackle the gender pension gap and encourage more women to invest? It’s a complex and long-standing problem, and one that The Wisdom Council’s Yes She Can campaign was created to address – while addressing an untapped long-term savings market worth an estimated £350bn.
Yes She Can looked to consumer brand techniques to discover the reasons why women don’t invest, applying the same research, innovation and technology-based principles. After the initial research phases, involving thousands of women nationwide, the Yes She Can team created a highly targeted social media campaign using warm, upbeat and relevant content to engage with women. By connecting with them ‘in their world’, we were able to start honest and open conversations about investing and finances… conversations that women simply weren’t having.
Fresh thinking for female finances
We used our initial research data to create behavioural nudges to change thinking about money via our ‘Get Financially Fit’ initiative, fronted by broadcaster, Kate Thornton. This campaign achieved remarkable results, including a 400% increase in marketing effectiveness, 1.9 million impressions on our page and, crucially, meant that we were able to undertake a deep dive into women’s mindsets around money, savings and pensions, via qualitative research.
The latest phase of the Yes She Can campaign builds on the already powerful insights gained. We’ve identified seven key ‘clusters’ of women, based on life stage, socio economic factors, spending habits, brand affiliation and attitudes to money and risk. Together, they make up 90% of the UK female population. Our aim is to reach as many women as possible via campaigns and events including brand and influencer partnerships and to affect behavioural change – by encouraging them to think of themselves as investors.
Yes She Can… get financially fit
Launched in 2019, in collaboration with key financial and professional services firms (read more about the background), Yes She Can was initiated in response to industry research which showed that the average woman’s pension pot is one fifth of the average man’s pension and, at current rates, it will take 100 to 250 years to address this gap. Our early stage research, involving thousands of people nationwide, revealed that nearly half (49%) of women had never invested and, of those, 85% didn’t think investing was ‘for people like them’.
We have already gathered together some powerful case studies involving women who have totally changed their mindsets around money, thanks to Yes She Can. We are looking forward to taking this to scale during our final phase of the campaign.
“This is a time for opportunity and change. New ways of thinking, living and working are emerging from this pandemic that should, by rights, empower women” Kate Thornton
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