Underserved market for advisers? Women

Advisers have a real opportunity to serve the needs of clients who are saving for retirement — especially women. A new survey of defined-contribution-plan participants conducted by Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. revealed that women are more likely than men to seek professional retirement-planning help as a result of the recession. Roughly 12% of the surveyed women said they already use the services of an adviser, compared with about 10% of the men in the poll. “It is incumbent upon providers and financial advisers in the retirement space to provide the information necessary to help both men and women make good decisions,” Elaine Sarsynski, executive vice president of MassMutual's retirement division, and chairman and chief executive of MassMutual International LLC, said in the press release. Being able to retire is the biggest concern of the respondents (followed by health care costs, job security and managing debt). But 70% of the women said they're more worried that they won't succeed at retirement planning. About 63% of the male respondents echoed that concern. One note: Men are more sanguine about making investing decisions than women, according to the survey results. Almost 48% of male respondents said they are confident in their investment skills, compared with barely a third of the women. Men also indicated that they enjoy managing and learning about their investments more. Both men and women, however, are surprisingly optimistic about the stock market and have begun to put more money into equities. About 75% believe that the stock market will continue to improve over the next 12 months. MassMutual surveyed more than 1,000 of its retirement plan participants Nov. 15 through Jan. 15.