After an international career in banking, Rosemary de Lambert has the experience and understanding to manage her family’s financial holdings, but she understands why many women find handling significant wealth a significant burden. A long-term Macquarie Bank executive, rising to the position of Chief Operating Officer of Macquarie Private Bank, de Lambert is now retired, in her late 50s, and living on the NSW Central Coast with her long-term partner.
“A lot of the time for women, when they’re coming into the environment of needing financial advice or managing wealth, they’re very vulnerable, and they don’t know what’s going on,” she says. “It’s very easy for them to be taken advantage of because they have been sidelined, either within the family in discussions about the wealth, or even personally when it comes to their own earning potential.”
Despite this long-entrenched financial disparity, women will receive 65 per cent of nearly $5 trillion due to pass from baby boomers and their parents to the next generation in coming years, according to a 2024 JBWere report. This shift has been dubbed the most significant wealth transfer in Australian history.
Women live longer than men and as a result more women than men inherit wealth from a marriage; couples break up and women are now more likely take charge of their own and their descendants’ finances. At the same time, women are increasingly moving up through corporate ranks, running their own businesses and making the big financial decisions.
This over-arching generational change has substantial knock-on effects. Growing numbers of women consult finance professionals to inform their financial planning, yet only about one in five Australian financial advisers is female.
Financial Advice Australia Association CEO Sarah Abood says the demand for women advisers is “obviously increasing” and the enduring shortage of women advisers is a problem. “It has sat at somewhere between 21 and 22 per cent for several years,” she says, adding one large driver is the numbers of women advisers who have children and are then unwilling to return to an industry often seen as inflexible.
Significant life events such as death and divorce can encourage women to make big financial changes, Abood says. “Something like 70 per cent of widows leave their adviser within 12 months of their spouse’s death,” she adds, noting certain financial advice firms promote themselves as divorce specialists.
For her part, Rosemary de Lambert is a careful shepherd of her family’s wealth. With adult step-children, grandchildren, a sister, and a niece and a nephew, as well as her parents, now in their 80s, she manages significant family holdings.
She says her career with Macquarie Bank – in Australia, the UK, Singapore and Hong Kong – gave her financial independence and a deep operational understanding of how wealth actually works, not just in theory but in practice and on an institutional scale.
Nevertheless, she now welcomes professional financial advice. She confers with an adviser, she says, because it is important to have someone who brings perspective, challenges her assumptions, and holds her accountable.
“My parents built and managed wealth carefully over many decades, and I’m now deeply involved in the stewardship of that legacy — as executor of their estates, as an attorney under their powers of attorney, and as someone responsible for ensuring that what they built is preserved and passed on thoughtfully,” she says. “That work involves trust structures, estate planning, and navigating superannuation — it’s complex, ongoing, and something I take seriously.”
While she doesn’t want to be reductive, she believes broad-scale gender differences exist in the field of financial advice. Women have different ways of framing problems, she says. “In my experience, female advisers often take a more holistic view — they’re more likely to ask about the full picture, the family dynamics, the longer-term purpose of wealth, rather than moving quickly to product solutions.”
De Lambert says it can be difficult for women to select a financial adviser – “for me, it’s whether or not, you feel handled as compared to treated like an equal.” She has an on-going relationship with “excellent” Perpetual Group senior financial adviser Renee Condylis. They meet at least once a quarter, and they talk on the phone as the circumstances dictate.
Condylis says a decade in the wealth sector – with Macquarie Bank and then Perpetual, advising some of Australia’s most affluent families and sophisticated family offices, has given her a front-row perspective on how wealth, influence and decision-making dynamics have evolved.
“When I first started, in what was very much a male-dominated environment, women were often sidelined in client discussions,” she recalls. “In meetings with, say, Mr and Mrs Smith, it was rarely Mrs Smith’s voice that shaped the outcome.”
Since then, she has watched the evolution of women in finance, noting women are increasingly leading financial conversations and playing a decisive role in shaping long-term strategies – particularly in high-net-worth families. “It’s no longer the exception; it’s become a defining feature of modern wealth management,” she says. “The breadth and influence of women in these discussions has expanded significantly.”
Philanthropy is often on the table in these women-led discussions – solutions, information, how best to make an impact with an investment dollar, she adds. In the past, the question of philanthropy was rarely brought up, whereas now it’s almost expected.
“There’s a deliberate focus on impact – how capital can be deployed thoughtfully to create meaningful change,” she says. “Clients want clarity around where their money is going, what it supports, and whether it aligns with their broader values.”
The bottom line remains the primary focus, she says, but it’s increasingly important to broaden the view. “Women bring distinct priorities and a different lens to wealth management,” she says. “It’s not just about returns, it’s about aligning success with purpose, values, and long-term impact. That shift is reshaping the industry in a very powerful way.”
In Mornington Peninsula, Victoria, Sabina Robertson has also developed a deep and satisfying relationship with her current financial adviser – a woman attuned to her specific requirements.
With a long career as a librarian, Robertson first sought professional financial advice ten years ago. She wanted help to manage her assets, including inherited property, and her superannuation, and to plan for a stable and secure financial future.
Since then, advisers from the women-led financial advice company StoryWealth have helped her with property decisions, manage her super, provided her with advice on retiring and even arranged nursing-home care for her mother.
Their gender is important, says Robertson. “There is an understanding there,” she adds. “It’s not set and forget. It’s long-term, and it’s checking in and having, at times, quite deep conversations about the future.”
She sees StoryWealth co-owner and financial adviser Kara Treeby two or three times a year to determine how best to manage her wealth.
“My discussions with Kara are a wonderful mix of current plans – travel, renovations, and buying art; and longer-term issues – estate planning and aged care,” she says. “With such discussions comes trust, mutual respect, care and an understanding of the importance of creating long term financial security. I could not do this on my own. Kara listens and has insight into my values and how I wish to live.”
Treeby founded her first financial planning company with a like-minded colleague in 2008 when she was about 23. Back then, she remembers, there were few female advisers and few women taking charge of substantial wealth. “Over the past few years I’ve seen a clear and meaningful shift,” she says. “Women are not just participating in financial decisions, they are increasingly leading them.”
StoryWealth has evolved in certain ways to cater to this shift, including introducing a dedicated website booking pathway for clients seeking a female financial adviser.
Increasing numbers of women are enquiring about financial advice, she adds, noting that many women, both in and out of relationships, are now driving financial decisions. “A lot of people come to us because they see that this is a female-run and -led business,” Treeby says.
Her clients have brought up the coming wealth transfer, she says, and many want to tailor a gift or living inheritance for their children, a move that requires substantial work to determine how much they will personally need for the future to avoid problems down the track. “How much do we need to factor in for future aged care, and how much for all the possible future scenarios to ensure they don’t over-gift,” she says.
Treeby says the coming wealth transfer has enormous implications across many life stages.
“I think for a lot of businesses, if they’re not considering or thinking about how that relates to their business, and the strength of that female-led decision making and responsibility,” she adds, “then they really should start looking at it.”