BlackRock study finds advisors rank growth eighth for women who rank it first

BlackRock's new Future of Wealth study asked affluent women to rank what they want from their money and asked financial advisors to rank what they believe those women want. The two sets of answers describe different clients. Women put growing their wealth first among their financial priorities; the advisors rank growth eighth for them.

The tax answers diverge by a similar distance. Forty-one percent of the women prioritize better tax outcomes, against 12% of the advisors who believe that is a key priority for their female clients. Career earnings are the most cited source of women's wealth, called a meaningful source by nearly 80% of the affluent women surveyed, which sits awkwardly beside an industry story that has long located the opportunity in an inheritance not yet received.

BlackRock surveyed more than 1,000 affluent women and more than 400 financial advisors, as Financial Advisor Magazine reported. The sample is large enough that the gaps resist being waved off as noise, and the questions are pointed enough to be uncomfortable: advisors were asked to estimate what their female clients want.

"Women are not a niche segment of investors, but a leading indicator of where investor expectations are headed," Jaime Magyera, head of BlackRock's U.S. Wealth and Retirement Businesses, said in a statement.

The study's own numbers land closer to the ground than the framing does. Forty-five percent of women with at least $10 million in assets are not working with an advisor. Nearly 40% of advised women with $5 million to $10 million are considering switching advisors over the next two years. Thirty-five percent of the women surveyed say they plan to change advisors over that window because of unmet needs for coordinated advice, and more than 25% say unmet tax-related needs could drive a switch.

The advisor side of the survey makes those departures harder to file under service. Ninety-two percent of advisors serving high-net-worth clients say those clients ask them for tax guidance frequently. Only 17% of those advisors say after-tax returns are a primary driver of their portfolio decisions.

Those two figures do not contradict each other on their face. A portfolio can be built around allocation with the tax consequences handled afterward, at the review meeting and in the accounts. What the study measures is how often the question gets asked against how much weight the answer carries: if 92% of advisors hear the tax question from high-net-worth clients routinely and 17% let after-tax return shape the portfolio, then tax work is happening downstream of the investment decision, where it can be acknowledged without changing anything.

The retention numbers pick up the cost of that. BlackRock ties 35% of planned departures to unmet needs for coordinated advice and more than a quarter to tax. A woman who names growth first and taxes second, and who is earning her wealth rather than waiting to inherit it, is the client a large book can serve agreeably for years and lose at the first meeting where the two answers do not fit together.

The 45% figure will be read as a prospect list, and it is not quite one. The study reports the share of $10-million-plus women without an advisor, not the share of them who want one, and it reports both the share considering a switch and the share planning one across the same two-year window, two measures that overlap in ways the study does not disclose. Read as a market, the numbers are directional; read as a pipeline, they are not.

After-tax return is also the number that survives comparison with whatever else a client might have bought, which makes the distance between 41% and 12% a revenue question as much as a service one. An advisory fee justified by planning is finally tested by the figure on the statement, and on the survey's own evidence most advisors do not claim to be steering by it.

The older narrative this study complicates is the one the industry tells best. BlackRock's findings challenge the long-standing story that the opportunity arrives when trillions of dollars pass to women through inheritance, widowhood and the Great Wealth Transfer. The survey data says a meaningful share of that wealth is already being earned. An advisor whose women's initiative is a pitch for estate planning is solving for money that has not moved yet.

None of this argues for a separate practice for women, and Magyera's statement does not ask for one. It argues for a different answer to a question advisors say they already field. The study reports what advisors say drives their portfolio decisions rather than what their portfolios do about tax, and it does not publish the overlap between the women considering a switch and the women who name tax as the reason. Both gaps point to the same follow-up: compare the after-tax-return answer against the tax reporting inside the accounts, and see whether the 92% who hear the question are also the ones who act on it.