Mercer Global Advisors Launches Women & Wealth
Mercer Global Advisors, a Denver-headquartered registered investment advisor with approximately $96 billion in client assets, has launched a Women & Wealth practice, a dedicated group of advisors committed to supporting female investors.
The firm has promoted Laura Combs, an executive managing partner, to lead Women & Wealth. She previously served as executive managing director of the North division.
Mercer has had a strong focus on women and wealth for many years, having launched its InvestHERs women’s initiative in 2018. That initiative was focused on attracting female talent to the organization and developing and supporting female employees.
But this practice will focus on advisors specializing in female clients, and delivering a unique advice experience to those women. Mercer currently has about 100 advisors who specialize in working with women, and Combs expects that number to grow.
Nearly 50% of Mercer’s advisors and 40% of its executive team members are women.
“This is a business imperative,” Combs said. “This is one of the fastest-growing wealth segments across the country that we’ve seen—women inheriting at a faster rate, women earning at a faster rate. We want to be a destination for women to have their wealth management needs met.”
One area the practice will focus on is female business owners who might have liquidity events.
“How do we actually come alongside them, walk them through liquidity sale, walk them through investing, walk them through negotiating that process?” Combs said. “And how do we make sure that our team is there to support them in a way that maybe the industry isn’t set up to do currently?”
The practice will also focus on women who are going through divorce.
“Establishing this Women & Wealth practice, it really represents our commitment to serving women as a permanent commitment,” Combs said. “This isn’t just an initiative. We really are placing a huge emphasis as an organization in serving women clients and particularly making sure that we have a professional home for women advisors, women fiduciary professionals to do the best work of their careers.”
Some other large RIAs have launched dedicated groups to serve female investors. In September, RFG Advisory, the Birmingham, Ala.-based hybrid RIA platform, relaunched StrongHer Money, an internal program for training and coaching advisors on serving female investors.