Execution Only and Gender

G

GSheehy

Registered User
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Below is a snaphot of an execution only book of business by gender and age. Do bear in mind that it's not exclusively pension business but the vast majority of it is.

We know there is a gender pension gap that is attributed to salary disparity and less years in paid employment (caregiving).

We also know that:
  • Women start their pension plan age 36 and men start theirs at 37.
  • 48 percent of employed women participate in pension plans when they are made available to them compared to 47 percent of men.
  • 57 percent of women are active in their pension plan when in paid employment versus 55 percent of men.
  • Both women and men contribute on average 11 percent of salary to their pension plan, including AVCs, employer and employee contributions.
Source is an Irish Life Gender Pension Parity 2024 Report

What can we do to balance the percentage of women who elect for an execution only service based on the 4 bullet points above? Realistically, the percentage should be much closer, no?

 
So gender doesn't affect participation in a pension, but twice as many men don't take advice?
 
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GSheehy said:
Realistically, the percentage should be much closer, no?
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We see big gender differences in personal choice across many domains of life (careers, hobbies, entertainment, etc). Is it necessarily a problem that there's a gender difference in pension choices? If not, what's the real problem?
- Too many men selecting execution-only?
- Too few women selecting execution-only?
- A bit of both?
 
Ger is looking for a way to attract more women to his business?

All my colleagues are women. Recently several of them signed up to Irish Pensions and Finance (IPF).... perhaps the worst value AVC broker in the country. Yet when I asked them how did they get on with their IPF broker meetings all I heard was: "Oh she was lovely", "Oh he was so nice" etc etc.. None of them had the slightest interest in querying the impact of 4% contribution charges and 1% AMC on their pension funds or were they getting a good deal compared to alternatives. They were more concerned that they were doing the same thing their other female friends were doing and to a lesser extent interested in being sold additional stuff like income protection....

Execution only might be considered more risky to some, perhaps to women even moreso since you are doing more of the research yourself and making decisions solo.
If availing of that service involves more solitary independent thought than group think, chat and discussing each others feelings then it's no surprise execution only is less appealing to women.

I don't know how you could make it more appealing to women. If there's more to the service than I mentioned it needs to be emphasised what supports and hand holding there would be. Maybe some big ad campaign with an empowered woman wining at life telling us - "Follow me to execution only dot eye ee!"
 
Women are on average better at finding value and managing a household budget.

Men are on average better at big decisions on investment and borrowing.

Both are equally important for the financial health of a household.

There is of course big variance here and my point is about averages. Lots of women are brilliant at investment decisions and lots of men good at budgeting.
 
CharlieMac said:
If availing of that service involves more solitary independent thought than group think, chat and discussing each others feelings then it's no surprise execution only is less appealing to women.
Click to expand...
It probably the opposite.

Information on the existence of, and what exactly an execution only broker does, is only gained by people who engage in active discussion with others.

This could be from sites such as this one or conversations among work colleagues.
 
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The execution only brokers who regularly post here, appear to operate a low cost business model.

They don't seem to spend money on advertising and operate very basic websites.

If they wanted to attract more business from women they would pobably need to advertise to women's groups.
 
It's a kind of men are from Mars women are from Venus thing.

@Dr Strangelove is right, there are differences between the sexes but it's not black and white either. Finding value is important to women yet they are not drawn to the type of effort required to find great value in their pensions by going the execution only route. Anything that would require too much faffing around could be off-putting to them. Women might be better at making a good enough decision and getting on with other priorities.

@S class is right that the service needs to be explained and advertised to women taking their priorities into account. I don't see many people gathering in groups at work discussing pensions in any detail let alone execution only pensions. I suspect the majority of users on this site's pension forums are male.
 
I'd say many married women don't have the time to spend hours researching on websites such as askaboutmoney.com due to an unfair allocation of household chores and parenting activities. In order to catch their attention execution only brokers need to market on the platforms that they use such as Instagram.
 
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I think it might be partly a confidence gap issue. There are some studies saying men can overestimate their competence or ability at something and women sometimes underestimate it - imposter syndrome if you will. So maybe it's a sense of men having more confidence (justified or misplaced!) to go ahead on their own and women not having as much confidence about it and seeking extra advice.

Edit: And what flybytheseat said!
 
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Who takes out a prsa? Is it mostly public workers? If so, they are mostly sold through Cornmarket, and how does a provider access that channel? The banks target public sector workers for mortgages. Maybe people simply dont realise that there are alternatives to Cornmaket? What is the gender split of public service workers at salary levels that would allow for avcs ?

What is the path to execution only? Is it a prsa a gateway, and then people start to understand more about pensions and then move on to a different plan? So is the starting point to get more women making an avc in the first place and then converting to execution only?

Do more women opt for avcs as they might have more gaps due to caring breaks ? (No evidence to back this up!) Or do they buy back years ? Is there an element of degree of risk of avcs v certainty of years despite the cost ? Are there studies on risk taking and gender to support this?
 
AVCs in general are poorly understood and communicated. For instance @misemoi, AVCs are a good way for a public sector worker to build a fund that could be used to "buy back" years. But I think plenty of public service works are unaware of either option let alone their contrasting features or how they could compliment each other.

This site is a fantastic resource. Would be great if more people could be encouraged to come on here, read threads and ask questions. Maybe there are ways to promote greater awareness of askaboutmoney such as putting related content on a companion YouTube channel, Blog or other platforms used by different age groups and genders (Instagram, Tik Tok?!)
 
CharlieMac said:
Maybe there are ways to promote greater awareness of askaboutmoney such as putting related content on a companion YouTube channel, Blog or other platforms used by different age groups and genders (Instagram, Tik Tok?!)
Click to expand...
I for one would gladly pay a subscription to watch @Brendan Burgess doing a viral dance while dispensing financial advice on TikTok...
 
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