In my role at Ancora, I spend a great deal of time thinking about what creates an exceptional client experience. Again and again, I come back to one simple idea: the strongest relationships are built when people feel known, understood and valued.
That idea matters most when I think about how our industry engages with women.
Traditionally, wealth management has treated married clients as a single household. Understanding a family’s complete financial picture is essential, but it isn’t the whole story. We also need to recognize the individuals within that family. A couple may share financial goals, yet have very different interests, concerns and ways of engaging with their wealth and their advisor.
Building a relationship with a woman independent of her spouse isn’t about excluding anyone. It’s about making sure she has her own meaningful connection to the firm and the people who advise her family, and that requires more than adding her name to an invitation.
It requires intentionality: creating experiences and conversations that are genuinely relevant to her. Sometimes those conversations are financial — estate planning, philanthropy, preparing children for wealth, caring for aging parents, navigating a major life transition. Just as often, the strongest connections happen outside traditional financial discussions altogether: a small dinner, a conversation about wellness, an experience centered on art, travel or community, a chance to meet other women navigating similar stages of life.
What matters isn’t the event itself. It’s whether we’re creating an environment where authentic relationships can develop through shared experience.
I’ve seen firsthand how different the conversation becomes when women are given the space to engage in ways that feel comfortable and relevant to them. We learn what matters to them, not only financially, but personally: the causes they care about, their concerns for the future, their children or grandchildren and what they ultimately want their wealth to accomplish.
Those conversations make us better advisors and better partners. They also matter over the long term. Life inevitably brings transitions, and there may come a time when a woman who has historically managed her family’s wealth alongside her spouse is managing it on her own. That moment is too late to begin building the trust that should already be there.
At Ancora, we talk often about delivering an exceptional experience at every touchpoint. This is a defining part of what that means to me.
Our responsibility extends beyond managing assets. It’s about understanding the people, families and generations behind those assets. When we take the time to know each client as an individual and create meaningful ways for them to connect with us, we don’t just strengthen a client relationship — we build one that can hopefully last for generations.