Emily Green: Women, Wealth, and Alternative Investments | Next Gen

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Welcome to Barron's Advisor: The Way Forward Next Generation, a special series spotlighting the emerging leaders shaping the future of financial advice. Twice a month, we'll be digging into the strategies, insights, and game-changing moves that will help you take your practice to the next level. I'm your host, Allison Tucci, and today with me is Emily Green. She started at Ellevest with $40 million assets under management. Ellevest is now at $1.2 billion. Today we're going to be talking about women investing, the great wealth transfer, and what you can do to talk to women more directly. So let's just dive right in. The great wealth transfer. Yeah. Everyone's talking about it, but families and advisors often aren't as prepared as we, you know, as they think they are.

Yeah.

What are you seeing?

Yeah, no, it's really interesting. And I think we talk about it a lot as advisors. And I think what we forget is that people don't talk about it. They don't sit at Thanksgiving dinner. They don't sit at Christmas dinner. They don't sit with their family and say, you know, that great wealth transfer that's coming to us. Within here. They're thinking about what's happening to them individually within here. And we also, you know, it's $84 to $124 trillion that's passing hands, the largest intergenerational wealth transfer ever in history. It's a lot of money within here. And we often talk about it as to the next generation. And what people often forget about is that men have shorter life expectancies than women. And so who gets the money first? So it's actually not the millennials that we keep talking about. You know, we talk about the Gen Zers get missed and then the millennials are the ones who really are going to benefit from this. But, you know, men die on average 6 to 8 years before women. So their wives take control of it within here. And so when we look at who, especially from our industry perspective, who is going to control this money, how is this going to change, especially over the next 5 to 10 years? It's going to be a lot of women getting the purse strings, being able to make the decisions from an investment perspective, having that advisor relationship. And so really looking at where is this going in the more immediate terms is a really important place to start.

So it's almost like a horizontal transfer.

Yeah, we call it that. Yeah.

Before it goes into a wealth transfer. So with that horizontal transfer, how are you tactically thinking about it, engaging the wife or ensuring that they're, you know, loyal? To the advisor? Because a lot of folks would say that the wife tends to fire the advisor.

Yeah, over 70% of the time in the first year after their husband's death, they will fire their advisor within there or leave the firm even more specifically that they were at. And so you really look at it and, you know, we are beneficiaries of that at LFS for sure. Within here, we have people reaching out who say, you know, my has been passed, I'm looking for a new advisor within that. And it's really being heard. And so it's interesting, McKinsey did a study that focused on women and money. And actually what they found, it wasn't that people were actually looking for a female advisor. I think a lot of times the industry, we talk about how advisors are mostly white, older men and how that doesn't match the women. And McKinsey's study, and they, they talked to women both in the US and internationally, went through like the reasons why of this within here. And it wasn't that they were looking for female advisors. We do have all female advisors, but it was really looking at a lot of the reasons that, number one, when their husband was alive, the advisor wasn't talking to them. And even there's a— they talk a lot about like the subconscious within there of who do you look at as the decision maker. And so even if the husband and wife sit at the table, who are you? Your body language means a lot within there. If you address an email, I think about that a lot when I'm sending my clients an email. I don't always just say John and Sarah. You know, you have to— Sarah and John. And I don't only say Sarah and John within there, like even the order, like how you're, how you're making those decisions with people, how you're addressing them, how you're engaging with them socially within there. And so are you only taking, you know, the husband out to golf? And what about the wife within here? And how are you engaging her? And it's, it's so much more than just, you know, how are you dealing with accounts? And, you know, we— I have a large client who's, who's someone I've known for a very, very long time. She has had wealth her entire life within here, is part of this great wealth transfer. And then her husband also made a lot of money. And the advisor that they had was actually advisor from her family, from her parents.

Oh, interesting.

And it was actually recently she moved, you know, tens of millions of dollars to us over the past year. And when she came to us, it was that they would call her husband about her accounts. So they had trust and they would say, you know, what are we thinking about the charitable contribution from her accounts within here? How are you thinking about this position within the account? And that they would always address him and she would tell them, don't do this. Like within here, like this matters to me. Like make sure that I, this is my account. It is my name on it within here. Yes, we look at everything holistically, but this is my account. And they just continue to do it. And it's amazing because when she first came to us, one of these people, because she kept complaining about her old advisor, I'm like, oh, she's going to be hard to please. And she's just so thankful that we just talked to her. Like the amount of things—

Wow, the bar is so low.

Yeah. Yeah. You don't realize it. All I had to do was acknowledge her within your talk to her, show her that we care within it. And it really is a lot of times just the things we— I think we think it's like this huge, big thing that we need to be thinking about. And it's actually really simple and just actually talking to people and acting like they're important within the conversation.

So taking that and now applying it to the gender wage gap, can you explain how you're trying to, I guess, either break the cycle or what are you exactly doing at Elvest to help with that?

Yeah, well, the wage gap is just one important piece of this bigger gap within here. So we at Ellevest like to look at the gender wealth gap within here. So that's all these gaps that are underneath that, that include the gender wage gap. We look at the gender investment gap, and that was actually why we originally started at Ellevest, is the fact that women were keeping $0.70 of every dollar in cash, which costs women hundreds of thousands, an average woman. Yeah. Women with means, millions of dollars over their lifetime within here. There's that. There's a fact that, you know, when the interest rates on loans, if a single woman, all these types of things that add up, the pink tax, you know, all these different types. Yeah, they all add up to this within here. And so the wealth gap is actually a white woman's wealth on a white man's is 32 cents on a dollar.

Wow.

Black women, it's 1 cent within there. And so the pay gap is large and it's actually gone backwards over the past couple of years, which I think is important to note as well. Because of COVID Yeah, it was making improvements and the return to office I think is a big part of that too. But the— that has really gone back a couple of cents over the past few years as well. We got up to, you know, like 82. We're going backwards now. But the wealth gap overall is a big important part of this. And so, you know, this is where we really try to look at investments. And you mentioned this, but the, the goals-oriented piece within that and how are we looking at what are your goals and how are we thinking about this versus framing investment as trying to win something within here or beat your neighbor or do these types of things, go to the cocktail party and talk about the interesting idea. Like, how is it that you— your goal is to retire early at 50 and spend time with your kids and buy a second house. How are we actually achieving that for you within there and trying to actually get you to invest? Because that is the first part of that battle of that wealth gap is just starting.

It's just moving from savings to investing and making sure you're getting more interest than you are on your, on your cash, essentially.

Yeah.

So that's the one thing I would say that probably moves the needle the most for women is, oh, definitely invest it. What would be that second sort of motion they should concentrate on?

Yeah, a lot of it is just finding that confidence. Within the investment. So we did a study a couple of years ago in 2022 on women's financial wellness.

Okay.

And just wellness overall. And it was really interesting.

Certain age groupings?

All ages.

All ages. Okay.

And it was really interesting findings. So we, there was generational differences, which was very interesting, but women on average ranked mental wellness the most important and then financial wellness before physical. Oh, interesting. Yeah, we think about—

I wouldn't have expected that.

I know, me either. All the money I spend on like fitness and things.

I know, I was just thinking about my gym classes.

Definitely the place I spend the most money on. But the— it was really interesting to see and that the average woman worries about money at least once a week within there, at least once a week. And so that— why does that matter within your— that doesn't only matter for investments, that matters for going and asking for that raise. That matters for every single thing. Every decision that you have about money in your life within that is finding that confidence. And it's recognizing the things around you. And so generationally, it was really interesting. The, the older generations, the boomers and Gen X were more worried about inflation, political instability within that. I see this all the time now, the tariffs, you know, like within this that makes them nervous of like, what's this going to be? And even more recently within here, when we're talking to clients, it's losing their job to AI. Oh, and what does that mean within them? Versus a younger generation, very different things. It was focused on things like their— what different policies in our government mean to them financially within their taxes, you know, things that were more immediate versus long-term things, which is really interesting when you see that.

I would have assumed that would have been the flip.

I know.

Okay. I know. So what is your thesis for why potentially?

Yeah, I mean, the— I see this with clients all the time within here now. And especially with, you know, those— we've seen very good markets 2023, 2024, 2025 for people, you know, a few blips in there along the way, but very good markets within here. And I think it's really interesting because you still see— I see women still very, very nervous about where we are financially and where they feel like they are in the markets within here. And you think like you've had all these years of great, phenomenal Phenomenal. But when you think about women look at, they feel nervous about decisions and we were alluding to this earlier as well. But women get nervous about doing the wrong thing within here. It's always, they're more worried. They'd rather you tell them, you know what, everyone goes to companies or stands on stage and tells them all the things you can do. Women worry about all the things they shouldn't do within here. And am I doing the wrong thing constantly within here? And so when you look at these older generations, you know, they're getting to the point where they're thinking about, I'm going to retire soon. They worry about all the things. Did I do a ton of things wrong in the past? Which you need to let go because, you know, yes, you should have, you should have saved earlier. You should have contributed to your 401(k). You should have.

You can't go back in time.

You should have, could have, would have. You can't do those things now. But like, what can you control going forward within that? And that's what that group really needs to focus on versus like all the things that were available to me I didn't do. It's what is available to me now that I can look at to go forward within there, which I think is a really important place to like reframe for these women.

You're listening to Barron's Advisor, The Way Forward: Next Generation. We're going to take a short break. Stay with us.

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Welcome back to Barron's Advisor: The Way Forward, Next Generation. Let's get back into the conversation. So where do you think the biggest misconception is in the market that women have currently?

Always worried that we are in— 2008 is going to happen tomorrow within here. And just the— we forget about good. I find that women forget about the good markets within here. Like, you know, there's all those charts that show bear market territory and like when you're— how long you're in a bull versus bear market within here. And it's always interesting because you look at, look how long a bull market is versus a bear market. But you remember all those bear markets because it felt the worst within there. And I always show these people the chart, but they always worry. And, you know, there's a lot of tools that can do this now of when you think about how much less am I going to have to spend if 2008 happens? Within that. And usually for high-net-worth people, it's actually not that big of a difference on a month-to-month basis of like, okay, if you happen to retire this year and it all breaks loose next year, yeah, not great. You look at historically, what does that mean for you if you retire right after that? It's not great. But if you planned correctly, what is it that you actually have to change financially in your spend? And it's not that much. And so I think empowering clients to actually see, I run this for people all the time of just like, What is that? What is that different number that, you know, okay, you were spending X, now you just, you can only spend Y. And, you know, I was talking to a client about this recently and she's retiring. I said, yeah, that could happen. But you know what? Then you're not going to do your kitchen renovation next year.

I was just going to say, you can just switch some of the things that you're spending.

Exactly.

As opposed to where you're investing.

Yeah.

So in terms of portfolio positioning, when you're having these conversations, are there anything that you look for where you're like, okay, I need to adjust this, I need to change this? When you're positioning overall outside of the cash, I'm assuming?

Yeah. So diversification is really key, I find, because any type of position that could— has more risk to it within here, any singular position, that, that means so many things within here. That could be a single stock. That could mean a certain sector within here. But like anything that someone has that is more susceptible to a down market within here, makes them really nervous. I think that's easier said than done because say someone has Apple stock within here, you know, yeah, Apple stock underperformed in 2025 within here. If you look at its peers at the same time, you look at— they, they look at it historically and they're like, well, why would I ever sell this within here? And it's really hard for them to think about selling that position, even if it's 20%, 30%, 40% of someone's account. And again, I work with a lot of people who worked at these big tech companies within here. So I see this. All the time because they have the emotion from the stock. And then you look at the news.

Well, it's a good bet. So you're here thinking, oh, this is a good— it must continue to be a good bet then. Yeah. Okay.

But it really is having them start to think about that portfolio and what does it mean on the downside to them? Because I always tell people volatility goes both ways. I like that. You know, it goes both ways. We always think of volatility as only down. It's up too. If it goes up a lot, it means it's a volatile stock as well within there. So, you know, there's a lot of risk on the downside. And so really helping them to look at how do you build that portfolio that, you know, we're not, we're not taking stock bets. We're looking to build. We look for passive investments, tax efficient. We do a lot of direct indexing in the public equity markets within there. How can we be smart from a tax perspective within that, which people really appreciate. And then, you know, from a bond perspective, finding that tax-free, tax, you know, tax-exempt income. And then we do a lot of alternative investing as well, which I think has helped our clients a lot because I think about it as like the third leg to that stool within here. When you have two legs, you know, you're a little wobbly within here. But add in that third leg. And I'm not saying that alternative investments are always going to go up within there because there are going to be times they go down. But what you're looking for is I've created a part of the portfolio that when two are like, when two are down, maybe there's one up or one—

it's diversification. It's just making sure that you're having that hedge against the public market. So how do you teach your advisors?

I I did not understand when I first came to Ellevest that every advisor did not know about alternatives. I grew up at JPMorgan. You learn about alternatives all day, every day within there. That is part of the intensive training that you consistently go through. You know, they make you roleplay it. So I did not understand. And I remember the first advisor I hired and I got on a call with her and I'm like, "Great, she's going to talk about the alternatives." And I was like, "Oh my God, I can never have her talk about alternatives again within here. Like, what am I doing? I cannot believe I just let people in the wild do this. And so we actually, we started having people take a course through CAIA that focuses on alternative. And it's a very intensive course actually that goes through like everything about—

What do you mean by intensive? Like the time and—

The time. It's online, so you can do it like as you please within here. But it goes through, it's a lot of hours within here, but it goes through every single part of an alternative investment in detail. Because like what, what then I found would happen is great. I'd have an advisor memorize this one thing about a multifamily real estate fund, but they didn't understand how a venture fund worked within here. And we all forget how long it took us to like learn all of this and all these people that—

There's a lot of different portions of it and they're not all equal and they have different weighted— Yeah. Yes.

And then what happens when something's going wrong? How are you going to talk about that when a fund gates liquidity? When a fund— like, how do you talk about that? And so we do a lot of We have people take the course, but then we do a lot of role play within there of really talking through things within here. And so having people really understand that. So I actually have people print our investment memos and I'm like, highlight the things that you want to say. And so that if you're at your desk, you like, and someone calls you about it, you can like pull out and be like, oh great, all the pink things are what I want to say about.

That's great.

And so make it easier. And then it's just making them comfortable with it. And so, we actually make sure that all of our managers are comfortable with our advisors actually calling them directly versus always going through our investment team for anything. So, if they need to say—

Oh, so you have scale.

Yeah.

That's great. So, that your managers are able to then answer the questions and they have that interface with the advisors and that professional way.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

And I find that then our advisors, sometimes an advisor is more embarrassed to ask another advisor or our internal team a question.

Oh, I can tell. I can see that.

But they call a fund manager, the fund manager is not going to like come rat on them to me that they didn't know.

Wouldn't be great for their business.

Yeah. No. So, you know, they're going to— they help them within there and they help them on that journey. And it helps the rapport between the advisor and the fund manager.

So for an advisor that's trying to get into this a little bit more, what are those things that a client would care about? If you could just go through a quick checklist for those folks who are listening in.

Yeah. So focusing on when are you starting to get distributions of any kind, I'll say within here, because distributions come in many forms. And so whether that's income, return of capital, you know, whatever you're getting within here, what are you getting? I noted this, but the— how— what's the taxation of a fund? And so we always focus on this across all of our investments. But like, what's your after-tax return within here? I think what advisors always think people care about the most is actually the 2 and 20, the fees. I find no one cares about that within here. As long as—

No one asked you the fees?

I mean, we go over them. No one cares within here. I think everyone gets so worried about the 2 and 20. I saw an article recently about like the pressure on the 2 and 20, which you do see a lot of like 1.5 and 15s, I think now on funds when you're looking at the fund fees. But as long as people see the value of it, they're willing to pay. And so it's— if it's real estate fund targets a 13 to 15% IRR, like they're like, great.

Exactly. I'm willing to pay.

Yeah, I'm fine to pay with that within here.

If I'm willing to pay for value. So it goes back to how you explain it, how you position it in your— in the client's portfolio. What are you actually trying to achieve? I think it goes back to almost that goals-based approach that you have. So, so just getting back to that and want to make sure that we, we wrap a bow. Are there any sort of aspects of women investing that you want to touch on as we're thinking about, you know, wrapping up this podcast?

One of the things I think that is most interesting about women and money that everyone assumes is that women are more risk-averse.

Yeah.

And that is just like kind of been the industry assumption. And at Ellevest, you know, we used to own a robo-advisor and fintech firm. So we have our wealth management business, but we also had Tens of thousands of people on the other side that we got to see data from on a daily basis of how they were reacting.

And they were just direct. Yeah, with the market. So it's— so you saw raw consumer sentiment almost for how they were behaving. Super.

And what we saw in 2020, in 2022, in these rough market periods, we— when you would look at some of these other robos and say, oh my, people are calling and pulling out of the markets and they're terrified. We didn't see that within your— we saw a much steadier hand. And I, completely see that in our wealth management business as well, even with our high net worth investors. Like, I remember the day after Brexit and I worked for JPMorgan and I woke up and was like, oh my God, the world has ended. I don't even think I took a shower. I ran to work and was like, everyone's like calling. And, you know, by the time we got to work, the market was on fire. Yeah, the market was literally down 3% and everyone's like, I need to move my money to Canada. You know, all of this within here and it became a non-event. But we saw 2022, and again, a lot of our clients are tech, like we have a lot of tech stocks within there, so they felt that within there when those tech stocks were down in 2022, 2020. You just see the people kind of, you know, am I going to be okay? What's going on with the market? They wanted to understand.

They wanted to know why. Yes. It sounds like not necessarily they weren't actively participating and they weren't withdrawing their funds. Yeah. Okay. So women are not as risk-averse as people assume.

They're risk-aware.

Oh, I like that. They're risk-aware. And how would you define the difference there? Just explaining the why and understanding of it. Okay. So what is a common, I guess, conception that people do have of women that is true?

Ooh.

Or are they all just myth-busting? Are you myth-busting left and right?

No, I mean, I think one of the things that the industry has talked about for a long time now, you know, there's the Morgan Stanley study years ago that women are focused on sustainable investing. And we see that within here. And so that women, you know, when you look at how women consume most of the consumer dollars, women kind of care. Just we see women put more money into their community when they have a dollar. And we see that with investments, you know, people coming to us.

Yeah.

And just even focusing on their values. So we don't use broad-based ESG funds. We focus on someone's actual individual values within there. And so like, how do you actually want to How do you want to implement? Do you care about these two things or do you care about those three things? Like you and me might have different—

Very specific as opposed to, yeah.

But people do care about that. And I find that it actually relates their money to them in a different way that when we're talking about these types of downturns like a 2022, well, they can also see what their money is doing on the other side from a data or storytelling perspective. And it creates a different relationship, which I think changes the reaction of, oh my God, this is the worst thing in the world within here because, you know, it doesn't matter.

You're putting your money to work for what you care about. So it doesn't matter in that way because you're actually seeing an impact. You might not see it financially, but you're seeing an impact of where your money is going. Yeah. So for advisors that are looking to expand sort of their reach to, to women specifically, what are some of the top, I would say, 3 things that you would advise them to do?

Yeah. So I always think about from a marketing perspective, you know, I think when you're looking at an upcoming advisor, there's the old school one-to-one approach and then there's the one-to-many within there. And where are women? Where are they reading? What are they looking at? And they're on social media. They're on, you know, even before we filmed, you and I were talking about Instagram within here. And so that's where they are. And so showing up in these places, we show up in these places. You'd be amazed at how many women And I'm talking about women with like tens of millions of dollars. Like, I saw your Instagram post on these types of things. And so showing up where women are, number one, to just find them within here. Second, I'd really look at just how are you showing up in the world within there? So if a woman— I'm not telling you the woman only wants a female advisor, but I am telling you that she doesn't want to go on your site and see only men too within that. That is intimidating to her within that. And so thinking about what does your team look like? How are you showing up? If you bring the junior woman, are you actually letting her talk within that? Does she actually have a role? It's really easy to give every single person on your team a role. It literally takes a 2-minute pre-meeting.

I was just about to say that is one of my— Yes. It bothers me so much when someone says, "I bring a woman to a meeting and they just sit there taking notes the entire time." It's almost worse in some facts because you're like, you're not giving her a moment to speak and space and making space for them that way.

And it's really easy to do.

Yeah.

And then I go back to what we talked about. It's really focusing on goals. And so instead of sitting there and talking about being worried about the markets and all these different things, let's bring it back to what are you trying to achieve? And always working with women in that way. So what is your goal? Is your— and it's not your best friend's goal within here. Is your goal to retire early and maybe consult? And let's, let's build you what that life looks like within here.

Move to Hawaii. Like your one friend, maybe from Texas to Hawaii. That was her goal. That was specific. Well, I absolutely love that. And thank you for providing those 3 things for advisors to speak more directly to women and make themselves more approachable for them to have the conversation, invite them to the table. Well, Emily, I so appreciate this conversation today. Thank you so much for coming in.

Thank you. It's been fun.

The production team for Barron's Advisor: The Way Forward: Next Generation is Ellie Ismailidou, Rebecca Bisdale, Paul LeBlanc, and Alexis Moore. Jenna Mathis is the Director of Programming for Barron's Advisor Programs. Greg Bertollis is the Editor-in-Chief of Barron's Wealth and Asset Management Group. Allison Tucci is a freelance host for Barron's Advisor and SVP at AssetMarkt. We'll see you next time.

This podcast was brought to you by Wells Fargo Advisors. Looking for a firm your clients can't outgrow? Wells Fargo Advisors offers financial advisors full balance sheet solutions with wealth planning, investment products, banking, and lending that meet the needs of affluent to to ultra-high net worth clients. Build your practice your way and on your schedule with independent and employee model options designed to meet your needs today and tomorrow. Learn more at joinwfadvisors.com.