As women take impact investing by storm, the ripple effects are leading to more women in finance assuming leadership roles and more female entrepreneurs reaping the benefits.
This shifting gender balance in wealth shows that when women hold the reins of capital, the outcome is that investments that generate positive social and environmental impacts often win top priority.
Women are guiding female clients’ investments
By 2020, women are expected to hold $72 trillion in private wealth, or 30 percent of the total wealth in the US, a huge jump compared to $34 trillion in 2010, according to a recent story in The Economist. Women will also become the largest beneficiaries of the $30 trillion intergenerational wealth transfer over the next 25 years.
As TriplePundit has reported, gender parity in the financial world is staggeringly poor, with Wall Street heavily dominated by men. Yet while less than five percent of women hold senior leadership roles in the asset management industry, impact investing is a striking exception. One third of the 2017-18 ImpactAsset 50 fund managers are led by women, and 41 percent of these funds’ senior management teams are females.
Supporting female-led start-ups
When that capital ends up in the hands of women, they often turn around and support other women. But there is still a steep hill to climb. As of October 2017, women made up just eight percent of investing partners at the top 100 venture capital (VC) firms, according to the venture-tracking site Crunchbase.