As an industry titan managing roughly $2.5 trillion for clients, Merrill Lynch's latest research, Seeing The Unseen: The Role Gender Plays In Wealth Management, takes another step in that direction.

Top level, the study found that younger women investors are twice as likely to lead family finance decisions as the previous generation . So, as constituents, it pays to get the advisory approach right. Secondly, it found that women investors are satisfied overall with their advisors and are more likely to recommend them than their male counterparts. So build a good relationship and they can be your greatest advocates.

To get to the heart of where subtle biases and stereotyping set back female investors as they grow in market stature, Merrill used Michigan-based research group Escalent to conduct four studies of women’s investing behaviors. These combined insights on instinctive decisions to more deliberative thought processes, using one-on-one and in-persion interviews, focus groups, and a survey of roughly 4,000 investors currently working with a financial advisor in a multi-demensional approach. Interactions were monitored using live ethnographic simulations, such as eye tracking, heat mapping, and language analysis to spot biased behavior. The group chosen was considered as nationally representative of advisors and investors in the industry.

So what did all this reveal?
Overall, women felt positive about their financial advisors. Seventy per cent reported that they were likely to recommend their advisor, compared with 65 per cent of men.

Younger women are changing the industry
Relative to women aged 55 and older, younger women are:

-- 4.5 times more likely to consider themselves knowledgeable about financial products and services; 
-- Nearly 60 per cent are more likely to feel comfortable discussing financial topics; 
-- Three quarters are more likely to manage their own finances against half for women 55+; and 
-- And three times more comfortable making financial decisions on their own.

But gender biases remain...
Nearly one in ten female investors reported a negative experience with an advisor based on gender stereotyping. Analyzing the live simulations, both male and female advisors made miscues, including assumptions that men were the financial decision-makers; women were more risk-averse; and that finances among couples were assumed as merged or jointly invested.

"The time is overdue for wealth management to catch up to and fully address the financial experiences of women,” said Andy Sieg, head of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, calling the firm's research "an important step" in ongoing efforts to advance women investors economically and financially.

By shining new light on stereotypes that still exist, the firm hopes that the latest insights will enable the larger industry to do a better job of identifying and confronting stereotypes to serve women better.

Being able to look at how advisors anticipate, encounter, and manage stereotypes, it said that gender biases are a persistent problem for the sector. And as younger women take more control of their finances and those of family members, they are not going to tolerate these biases once they are pointed out to them, the report warned.

Taken in the round these miscues have a damaging effect on the female wealth picture and show why such research is useful to the industry. Research by the Boston Consulting Group suggests that women are adding to their assets at a rate of $5 trillion per year globally and in the US.

Also notable
Tracing eye-movement, the report found that in meetings with a male and female couple, advisors focused over 60 per cent of their time on the male. It found that women investors meeting without their spouse experienced fewer miscues, regardless of the advisor’s gender. It also found that women are less likely to lodge a complaint against an advisor on poor service but more likely than men to switch advisors following such an experience.

Chief operating officer in wealth management at Merrill Lynch, Kirstin Hill said the firm is listening to women investors and taking action on their feedback as a way to retrain advisors.

“Later this year, we’ll be publishing additional research on the diverse perspectives of the Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino and LGBT+ communities. In addition to informing future advisor training, we’ll apply learnings from this body of work to several client-facing processes and procedures,” Hill said.