Really struck last night with the demographic of the people in the room (around 90% male) and the general demographics for users who trade with Freetrade and their competitors (even worse than 90%).
There must be something that can be done to address this and to appeal to women more. As a middle aged white man I appreciate I don’t have the answer but a couple of thoughts:
1: marketing in less traditional channels. (My wife spends half her Internet time on mumsnet for example, but equally, reaching out to influencers).
2. There’s a gender investment gap here - needs some serious attention. There is a link between being independent and financially independent.
3. Adam spoke last night about search and curation. Search by women founders, women CEOs, more socially aware companies…
Freetrade are doing a really good job of being super neutral (even the branding is pink, not to stereotype) and the tone of voice is really well-measured. There’s nothing inherently stopping women from using (and loving) the platform, it’s more of an education/interest thing.
In my opinion creating something like SheTrade is just as bad as Sheilas Wheels or something like that, but I do agree that they could reach a wider audience by advertising elsewhere.
Still not able to persuade any of my friends to invest - those who have ISAs only have cash ISAs and complain about the paltry interest rates.
When I mention investments, they say they ‘don’t want to lose all their money’ because all that sticks in their mind is sensational news about stock market crashes…
Anyway, found this website which looks quite good, although at first glance, can see lots of talk about cash ISAs…
I was at the Moneyfarm investor event a couple of month ago. They had invited a (female) financial journalist there who talked about the importance of saving. To do that, she talked about her working-class mother and grandmother and how she found cash (old bills) under her grandmother’s mattress after her passing. That story was very simple, authentic and sounded like something anyone could resonate with, but wasn’t openly pandering to a gender. It had a tone and a point of view that women in the room felt visibly comfortable with.
The journalist then made some fairly standard points on investing regularly, even over the last crisis, using a simulation — something probably easier to reproduce.
I think that talking about investing as something regular and common (typically a direct debit), something you do out of care for the next generation (possibly by suggesting to invest in companies who are carbon-positive for Freetrade generation), and something that is deeply tied to your idiosyncrasies (something that managed funds are not) would appeal to female investors more than gimmicks.
Yes, this exactly. Investing has very very Alpha male image. And the fact it has its own language is another ‘not for people like me’ factor. Normalisation and plain English are two very important things for all groups who traditionally aren’t drawn to investing. Demystify it and make it seem as intuitive as a savings account. Also I think where Autopilot will be particularly useful
I’ve been thinking that Freetrade could do with a ‘featured stocks’ page with themes, definitely ones featuring female leadership would be interesting! I’m not sure if they can implement something like that without it constituting as providing advice, though.
The point about investing regularly was actually pretty much this:
with a nice personal story around each investment date.
My first job was working for an asset management company that wanted to automate that kind of investment strategy (I know) so I can confirm it’s not just a story.
I have a lot of close female friends, but to my knowledge none of them actively invest in stocks. I guess women are just in general slightly more conservative and risk averse than men? We started a poker society when I was at university it was all guys, game theory classes, all guys, had an elective module where we could choose either Marketing or European Economics and the girls overwhelming chose marketing. I am not sure why this is but these are just my observations. Shetrade might be a hard sell, because i’m not entirely sure this audience is actively engaged in this subject in huge numbers, but yes, an untapped market nonetheless. Female forumites we are delighted to have you here however
You’re not being controversial at all, @James101 - I’m the only one among my friends who invests and I think they see what I’m doing as taking great risk and akin to gambling.
I grew up seeing my mum taking an active part with my dad sorting out their investments so for me, investing wasn’t something to be afraid of, or only something that men did - everyone did it.
@Andrewpclark mentioned Mumsnet and I think he could have a point there - if a normal mum talks about how she’s investing longterm for the future using Freetrade, others may be tempted to look into it and think ‘if she can do it, so can I’.
I’m trying to get my wife onboard (although being a yank she cannot use freetrade currently). Every time she sees money leave the account (now to freetrade) it sparks a slightly heated demand as to why that money did not go into the 0.25% savings account. I think it’s a mix of fear of the next financial crash, lack of understanding of the jargon (thus causing more fear) and belief that investing is complex. While investing can be complex, it certainly does not need to be and absolutely is not with freetrade. I think I need to introduce her to Bob…
It’s absolutely related to the image investing currently has. As has already been said, it’s seen as very alpha/masculine and I think a lot of people think that it has to be highstakes (à la Wolf of Wall Street).
Encouraging people (in general) to invest small amounts regularly, rather than piling all of their current savings into some stocks, would lower the stakes for the individual whilst also hopefully letting them learn more as they go (this is a big advantage of Freetrade, I personally didn’t delve into investing earlier because the cost in fees would have made it quite an expensive learning curve).
Another side to it is that money invested isn’t seen as accessible in case of emergencies, so women in particular are less likely to risk it (probably because women statistically have less money to begin with) and just put their money into cash savings with terrible interest rates.
I think if more was done to educate people on lower risk approaches to investing, and educate on the fact that current interest rates are so low that they don’t even beat inflation, then investing would be seen as a more attractive and viable alternative to cash savings and we’d see more diverse range of people getting involved.
As it happens, I’ve had another browser tab left open for ages now with the following Guardian article:
Seems to do a good job of saying a lot of what has been said here, and I’ve been sharing it with as many people as I can (which is one reason why I’ve still got it open; the other is because I want to go back and check out the books mentioned when they’re available).
The last paragraph is a nice nutshell argument to use for the risk averse:
And if you need convincing, consider this: if you had invested £1 in the FTSE 250 10 years ago, it would now have grown to £2.53, once inflation is taken into account, according to figures from investment firm Hargreaves Lansdown. Meanwhile, had you put £1 into an instant access account, it would be worth 87p after inflation.
PersonTrade - Although person trade does sound very likely to be illegal and an unfavourable name - nor should we joke about the slave trade that still goes on in today’s world!
But seriously, I don’t think ‘most women’ have interest in the stock market. My partner sees it as boring and not ‘fun’ - dare i say ‘a waste of money’.
Also looking into the future (with my crystal ball, naturally), it’s heavily tech based, and generally leans towards a guys’ lines of interest (Computing).
The stock market operates similar to a game, and more guys play games than girls.
