Firms have quickly ramped up the incentives to recruit and retain financial advisor talent, but those efforts are even stronger for women and minority groups. Merrill Lynch chair of Diversity and Inclusion said the “war for talent is alive and well” and they are trying hard to hire women and people of color in their ranks. No firm is outright saying they are paying women more money in advisor roles, rumors are trickling out that women are seeing higher salaries in order to be attractive to firms. There has been a huge increase in press events and speeches pairing ‘women’ and ‘wealth management’ from major brokerages. UBS, Edward Jones, and Merril Lynch have set high bars for their target percentage of their advisors are women or people of color.

Finsum: Women are an extremely valuable part of financial firms and efforts to attract and retain them will only intensify.