Women's work: MassMutual's directive to bring more women into financial services is changing how women look at the industry, and vice versa.

Key Points

* MassMutual aims to bring more women into the male-dominated financial services field to level the playing field and attract more women as clients.

* Changing demographics show women have a greater need for financial planning than men as they live longer and earn less over their lifetimes.

* As clients, women think differently from men, and need to be approached in a whole new way.

Long-time agent Caren Karpf recalls working recently with a widow whose financial planning had come up short.

"She needed contributions for a scholarship fund for her children," Karpf said. "And I don't want that to happen to anybody."

It's a fixable predicament that many women today aren't even aware of, which is why Karpf is one of a new breed of female agents at MassMutual Financial Group who are working to educate female clients about financial planning.

"It's so easy to take care of that problem. You need to talk to the women. You need to educate them: 'You don't know what's going to happen.' Nobody wants a scholarship fund for their children," said Karpf, an 11-year agent with the Philadelphia/Fishman agency in Cherry Hill, N.J. "We can't solve all problems, but that's an easy problem to solve. That's what my message is."

Bucking Tradition

The women's focus at MassMutual is a reaction to changing demographics in America, said Susan W. Sweetser, vice president of Focus Markets. She was brought in nearly five years ago to help develop the company's marketing and outreach efforts to female clients and field agents.

"Fifty years ago, in 1957, most women were staying at home raising the children. They were in charge of the house," Sweetser said. "Generally, it was the men in the family making a lot of the financial decisions."

And the industry reflected that: Financial services was traditionally a man's field.

"Fast forward to today, and that demographic is hugely different," Sweetser said. "Women are in the career force in a huge way. In fact, one-third of all American households are headed by a woman: She is single, widowed or divorced, but she is the one who is making all the decisions in that household because she is the household."

MassMutual has had a definitive focus on women's financial needs since a group of its women senior executives, general agents and key agents brainstormed ways to bring more women into the financial services industry several years ago.

"We believe this is an ideal career for women, and the products that we sell are products women really need," Sweetser said. "Men need them, too, but women especially need them because we live longer."

The first thing Sweetser did was get MassMutual to drop the word "initiative" from the women's directive, which made it sound more like "an issue du jour."

"We are not the issue du jour, and MassMutual recognizes that we are in this for the long haul," she said. MassMutual hosted its first women's financial-planning conference in October. It preceded the annual conference of Women in Insurance and Financial Services and was held at the same location. That made it easier for busy female agents--some of whom are working mothers--to attend both seminars in the same trip, Sweetser said. MassMutual is a platinum sponsor of WIFS.

Scheduled speakers included MassMutual's own Mary Grate-Pyos, an agent with West Financial Group in Bethesda, Md. Financial planning is all about economic empowerment and can change women's lives, said Grate-Pyos, who left a 19-year career with the U.S. Departments of Defense and the Interior to work for MassMutual. Yet women's overall presence in the field of personal finance is "absolutely deplorable."

"If a woman is empowered economically, a woman has choices. Domestic violence is a matter of a woman not being able to leave," said Grate-Pyos, who also is a board member of WIFS, an author, business owner and motivational speaker. "If you look at why women stay in jobs that they hate, it's that they have children to care for. It becomes a financial issue."

No More Frogs

Part of the women's directive at MassMutual is to reach female clients who have no idea of what financial services are out there, much less what they will need.

So Sweetser developed a series of seminars, starting with the whimsically-titled PowerPoint presentation, "Never Kissed a Frog. Never Had To." A more recent seminar, "Pearls of Wisdom," is an interactive video featuring the personal financial stories of 19 women.

"They talk about where they are in life and how it's impacting them financially, or how their finances may be impacting their lives," Sweetser said. Each testimonial lasts up to five minutes, and the characters are composites of MassMutual clients and relatives.

Karpf often uses "Pearls of Wisdom" to introduce insurance and financial planning to women's groups, businesses and other organizations. "It's just a wonderful way to say things that we've said to our clients in the past," she said. "In a group setting, the women sometimes talk amongst themselves.... If they have questions, they'll ask.

Women will do that; that's what these seminars do."

Women "don't want to have somebody telling them what to do," Sweetser said. "They want to be educated and make their best decision."

A woman's knowledge of financial planning is directly related to the era in which she was raised, she added. Most women were taught as children to leave financial planning to the men.

"But guess what? We're running organizations now. We're the heads of corporations," Grate-Pyos said. "There's no excuse for women not to take care of our finances. 'We didn't grow up learning about this?' It's an excuse."

With the average divorce rate in the United States near 50% (the National Center for Health, an arm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, shows a 2005 marriage rate of 7.5% per 1,000 and a divorce rate of 3.6% for the same), women need to be financially prepared.

"If there's a possibility that life might just happen, and in the process you end up divorced at age 55, don't you think you should bring your own toys to the table?" GratePyos said. "Every single woman needs money."

She often hosts "Tea & Finance" seminars for women at a local bed-and-breakfast. "You're not preparing for the worst, you're preparing for the best life you could have, and for any financial challenge that could come up," Grate-Pyos tells her women clients. "Life, death, disability, losing a spouse, I'm prepared for it."

Company spokesman Patrick Collins attended one of Sweetser's seminars last summer and came away with a new appreciation for women's communication styles. "It was astonishing how quickly women started sharing the most intimate details of their lives with people they were just meeting at lunch for the first time," Collins said.

"It is how we relate to each other," Sweetser said. She's currently using a book by Dr. Louann Brizendine called The Female Brain to teach agents the "significant differences between men and women in thinking styles and communicating patterns."

"Men use 7,000 words in a day," Sweetser said. "Women, we use 20,000."

Lately she's had mixed groups of men and women leading the women's seminars. "That really helps us to live up to our mantra about this career: You are in business for yourself, but you are not by yourself," Sweetser said. "It creates a beautiful synergy, especially for newer women agents."

MassMutual also launched an online course in April 2006, "Selling to Women," for its agent force.

"So many of the people in our force, men and women, were taught how to be successful selling the men's model," Sweetser said. "Agents were programmed to take two meetings at most with a client, and either walk away with a check, or go to the next client."

Yet most female clients aren't going to make a decision after the first meeting or even the second; it might take four to five meetings, she said.

"If a woman said to you, 'I want to think about it,' we're taught as an industry that means it's an objection," Sweetser said. "When men say, 'I want to think about it,' it's generally a nice way to blow you off. It's a different way of thinking."

Recruiting More Women

The number of female agents at MassMutual has been steadily growing, from 11% of the field force, to 12% last year, to more than 15% this year. "Our goal is 51%. I'm not sure we'll get to 51%, but our work force should reflect the reality" Sweetser said.

She referred to an analysis of census data published in the Jan. 16 New York Times noting 51% of women in the United States were living without a spouse in 2005-marking the first time married couples became the minority of American households.

But having more women in the financial services field is a "guarantee" that more women also will become clients.

"When they're away from their husbands, I think they really do appreciate another woman giving them financial advice--somebody who has children and works and has camaraderie amongst them," Karpf said. A career certified public accountant, she was brought into financial services by her father, a 40-year MassMutual agent, after her third child entered school.

Grate-Pyos uses a tactic with women-only audiences that she calls "the bathroom concept."

"When you're at a table and a woman goes to the restroom, two or three others will get up, too. Women, we all go together," she said. Women can learn to use a team mentality about personal finances as well. "From seminars to small groups in women's homes, I will ask them, 'Who wants to get their financial health in order?' Several raise their hands and I tell them, 'We can do this as a team. We can do this together.'"

MassMutual's women agents are excelling in their efforts. The company's highest producer level, "Top of the Council," increased its women members in 2006 from five to 12, for a 140% hike. Its "Blue Chip Council" (the next tier) increased its qualifying women last year by 50%; and its "Leaders" category saw a 22% increase.

"Every woman needs to take initiative if you want to be in this business. It takes guts, too," said GratePyos, who was selected last year as a "Freshman Five," one of the top five new agents in the company.

"I think sometimes because of society and the images we see of women, especially in this industry, it's that we don't necessarily always have the mindset to be the only woman--to go into an area where there are mainly men, mainly white men," said Grate-Pyos. "Can I be a woman and just go in there? I don't focus on my race or gender. I focus on what am I bringing to the table. Am I at my best to help my client? I never focus on the stuff I can't change."

It's the same with personal finances. Women need to step up and become involved in the financial planning process, Karpf said. "A lot of women say, 'My husband will take care of it.' Then it's not taken care of the way they want it taken care of. And if they do have their own business and own money, they need to take care of that as well, maybe to grow their wealth."

Many women may still believe in the myth, "Somebody is coming to take care of me," Grate-Pyos said. "Nobody is coming to rescue you; you have to rescue your own life. You need to be the chief executive officer of your own financial life."

SPREADING THE WORD: Financial planning for women is all about economic empowerment, said Mary GratePyos, author, business owner, motivational speaker and an agent for MassMutual Financial Group. Currently, she said, women's overall presence in the field of personal finance is "absolutely deplorable."

RELATED ARTICLE: By the numbers: women's markets.

* Women earn $1 trillion annually and are the primary breadwinners in a third of all marriages.

* Women will assume 90% of all assets.

* Women are involved in 80% of all financial decisions.

* Women--84% of them--feel misunderstood by the financial services industry.

* Nearly half (48%) of all privately held U.S. firms are 50% or more women-owned.

* Women are starting new businesses at nearly twice the rate of men; women of color are doing so at six times the rate of men.

* 86% of women entrepreneurs say they use the same products and services at home as at their businesses.

* High-net-worth women account for 39% of the country's top wealth earners; 2.5 million of them have combined assets of $4.2 trillion.

* Women professionals and executives--1.3 million of them--earn more than $100,000 annually; 43% of Americans with more than $500,000 in assets are female.

* Senior women are among the group of Americans aged 50 and older who control a household net worth of $19 trillion, own more than three-fourths of the nation's financial wealth and own 70% of all money market accounts and certificates of deposit assets.

Source: MassMutual Financial Group

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