Women don’t feel confident enough at investing, and London-based marketer Anne-Marie McConnon wants that to change. The investment industry needs to do more to reach women, says the Monaghan native, who is the global client experience officer at BNY Mellon Investment Management.
After the Leaving Cert, McConnon eschewed university to get straight to work. On holiday at the Edinburgh Festival with friends, she enjoyed the city so much, she stayed.
“I got a job there in finance, at the very bottom of the ladder. I think I even did the post in the marketing department at one stage and worked my way up,” she says. “Quite honestly, I would say I fell into the investment management industry, but then I fell in love with it.”
She found another love in Edinburgh too, meeting and marrying her husband who is Bengali. After a stint in Scotland, the couple moved to London and have two daughters.
McConnon grew up in a small village outside Monaghan town. Her father was a farmer and community leader, creating the first water scheme in their village. Her mother gave up a career in psychiatric nursing to raise her children and work on the farm. “Those values of community, family, working hard and being really independent started for me very early in life.”
Marketing has sometimes been perceived as “the colouring-in department”, says McConnon, but it’s a discipline that continues to evolve rapidly.
“I think in asset management, marketing was probably seen as more of a support role, but this has substantially changed,” she says. “It’s attracting a different skillset, digital being core and data being core.” Face-to-face contact with clients and financial advisers wasn’t possible during the pandemic and this accelerated the digitisation of communication.
Disruption from M&A activity and the emergence of fintech has meant rapid transformation and her role is as much about managing transformation as it is about marketing.
“It’s about getting consistent data, looking at our operating models and even looking at how we train our people in a different way,” she says.
Reaching new customers is important too, of course. Women don’t invest as much as men and until they do, both the investment management industry and women are missing a trick.
A survey published by McConnon’s company earlier this year showed that if women invested at the same rate as men, it could result in an additional €2.84 trillion of capital being invested globally. Just 28 per cent of women feel confident about investing, the data showed.
McConnon wants more women to invest and that means addressing the perceptions deterring them.
“Firstly, there was an income hurdle where women thought, I don’t earn enough money to do it,” says McConnon. The second thing was that women perceive investing as high risk, she says citing the research. “We think the onus is on the industry, on us, to positively engage with women and we need to do a much better job. Women need to act, yes, but we need to evolve what we are trying to do too,” she says.
Of 100 asset managers interviewed in the study, 86 per cent said their default customer was a man. “They are not even targeting women. I was astonished. I think, as a result, women are being met with language, imagery and messaging that is very male-oriented,” says McConnon. There is an over emphasis on risk and performance in communication, factors that are not motivating for women.
“They don’t just want financial return, women want to do good in the world and this is more pronounced among young women.”
Indeed, over half of women surveyed said they would invest, or invest more, if the investment fund had a clear goal or purpose for good, that is having a broader positive impact on society or the environment than just return on investment.
As well as changing how it communicates, the investment industry also needs to attract more woman employees, says McConnon. She does speaking engagements at schools, and a career in banking or finance isn’t something girls are talking about.
“If the industry is more reflective of the world and who we want to attract to investing, that’s going to have a knock-on impact,” she says. “The earlier young girls have conversations about money, the more likely they are to be confident about it.
“We want to move from Wall Street to All Street. We want this industry to be seen as an inclusive industry and we want women to come in at all levels. There are not enough woman fund managers or traders or research analysts, but you don’t just have to work in investment, you could also work in marketing, like me.”
The industry needs to attract more diversity in general, she says. “People think you have to come from Oxbridge or have an economics degree. That’s not my background and I know lots of fund managers and it’s not their background. It’s really a people industry, it’s not all about the numbers.”
World events have proved a tipping point for responsible investing, she says. “There is a move to build back better and invest in sustainable assets. We had Me too, Black Lives Matter and the mass trauma of the pandemic… I think we have an obligation to each other to operate in a way that is mindful of our collective futures. With what’s happening in Ukraine and Russia, I think that is even more pronounced.”
Brexit hasn’t affected her company’s flows of investment, she says, but it has made her value her Irish citizenship anew.
“I’m really pleased to still have an Irish passport, so yes, I was sad that Brexit happened but for me, I’m an Irish citizen and I continue to go back frequently.”
She and others have just started a London-Monaghan network to highlight opportunities for Monaghan businesses in the UK. “I am very connected to Ireland. I still call Ireland home.”
