Helping professional women grow and protect their wealth

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By Susan Rupe

Female professionals who are in high tax brackets tend to be busy professionals who don’t have the time to manage their money or plan for their financial future. So they turn to someone like Samantha Holowka for help.

Holowka is a wealth management advisor with Northwestern Mutual in Atlanta. She specializes in working with women who are physicians and other professionals, as well as women who are divorced or widowed.

She said she receives many of her female physician clients through referrals, “because it’s such an underserved demographic.”

“Women who are physicians are in a demanding job and they’re very smart people. But they have zero time to be smart in what I do, so that’s why they come to me.”

Her clients who are in demanding professions “are partners and mothers on top of their demanding jobs. Having someone who can speak their language, understand how busy they are and understand the financial problems that are unique to them is a big focus for them.”

Holowka said most of her clients are in high tax brackets or have lost a spouse to death or divorce.

“They either have assets they need to be able to manage for a long time or they need to start living off of portions of those assets immediately,” she said. “My approach is to be strategic yet compassionate in advising them.”

Women must be at the table

Holowka said some of her widowed clients had not overseen managing the household finances during their marriage, so they are traveling through new territory. Meanwhile, many of her clients have been so busy in their careers that they haven’t had the time or energy to deal with their finances.

“No matter if they haven’t been the one making financial decisions or if they were too busy to make those decisions, women were not at the table,” she said. “It’s my job to break the cycle of women not being at the table.”

Holowka said one key to working with female clients “is to make sure they are heard and that their goals and the things that are important to them are being incorporated in our conversations. We want to keep their trust and have them feel secure and safe with us as their advocate and their advisor.”

She said that her goal is to help her clients incorporate saving, investing, protecting and risk management into their financial plans “so that if life goes the way we plan, we have good financial options in place.”

“We want to make sure that even if they are investing through us, that they still have enough life insurance in place, that they have disability insurance to protect their income, that they’ve incorporated long-term care into their plan. We don’t want to just grow their wealth; we want to protect it.”

Advisors who want to serve women must develop good relationship skills, Holowka said.

“You must be able to help women be able to see the big picture, not just try to sell them something,” she said. “You must be able to teach her, help her understand and empower her. But don’t bore her with graphs and charts and jargon. Help her understand the recommendations we make will help her get where she wants to go. And help her understand you are solving her problems.”

Susan Rupe is managing editor for InsuranceNewsNet. She formerly served as communications director for an insurance agents' association and was an award-winning newspaper reporter and editor. Contact her at [email protected]. Follow her on X @INNsusan.