Female HNW clients on the rise

Addressing a recent PritchittBland Communications media event, BT head of wealth services Elissa Crowther-Pal said the institution was observing a “transition to females driving capital” as established professional women looked for their next investment opportunity.

“We are seeing a lot more women business owners who have run a business for a long time and are now selling that and becoming a professional investor from the proceeds, so how they direct that capital is really exciting,” Ms Crowther-Pal said.

“There are a lot of women who have had a medtech type of background or a professional background, so it’s an exciting trend that I’m keen to see much more of.”

Ms Crowther-Pal said female clients of the group’s private wealth business were interested in being hands-on and getting involved in investments that had the potential to be multi-generational.

“They want to educate themselves on investing, they don’t want to just hand it over to somebody,” she said.

“It’s a big decision to be managing your own wealth and many women think about it from a full generational tilt of how can they direct capital to their children and their [children’s] subsequent children, so they are looking for direction on that.”

Looking at broader trends, Ms Crowther-Pal said more high-net-worth investors were looking to cash out of the hybrid market and delve into high-growth investments in the private equity and venture capital space.

“You’ve got this new environment of negative real yields and massive quantitative easing which is flooding money into the economy, and there’s the question of where do you actually participate,” she said.

“Looking at what our investors are doing, they are selling hybrids, which are now at premiums, they’re looking at other opportunities to consider and they’re taking more risk because obviously that’s where they need to search for return.

“They love private markets but there’s adverse selection on what they can choose from. They’re looking for great private equity and VC opportunities but it’s very crowded and very expensive – there's a lot of people participating in the market.”