Sallie Krawcheck, CEO and co-founder of Ellevest
Women who talk about money are crass and unattractive, at least according to some.
Sallie Krawcheck, CEO and co-founder of Ellevest, a digital investment platform for women, wants to flip that social cue, partially because she knows it is far from the truth.
Girls are about equal to boys in math skills, but outperform in every other school subject. Meanwhile, the majority of women manage their family’s household income; at every age level, women show they are capable, yet the financial services industry was built for men.
“It’s all about outperforming,” she said at the UJA-Federation of New York’s i3 Summit on Tuesday. “Did you know the percent of women who said their goal is to outperform the market? Zero percent.”
Rather, women think of the market as something that will get them a home, their dream wedding or a thriving business, or pay for their kids’ education or their own retirement, Krawcheck said. And yet women tend to outperform men in the stock market once they determine their risk tolerance, Krawcheck said.
That mentality is best shown in her investing platform, Ellevest, where investors can choose which goals they want to invest in; those goals generate a performance forecast and a portfolio composition, which outlines how much money is invested in stocks, bonds and alternative assets like real estate, private equity or venture capital.
“If you don’t have a financial plan, you won’t achieve the things you want,” she said.
Krawcheck, who previously held the title of CEO at Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, aspires to close the investment gap that separates men and women and to offer more financial literacy.
“What I often start off with is the concept that money is power,” she said. “Women who have been able to call out their harassers have not been financially independent, but they have been financially stable. This lack of money vis a vis between the boys and the men have left us in vulnerable positions.”
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