This blog post is part of our #femalefintech initiative to showcase women in the fintech scene.
My name is Thabata Abreu and I am founder and financial advisor at FCP Financial Planning and Investments, a firm with the mission of helping Brazilians living locally and abroad to build and preserve wealth. We are pioneers in implementing the fee-based remuneration model for the general public and use robot advisors to optimize goals-based investment portfolios.
Rare perspectives for higher positions
As an economist, I started my career at an investment bank in offshore funding. I always had the opportunity to choose my activities at the institution, which made me feel very lucky in an environment with less than 10% of women. But the treaty was that we could choose our activities as long as we accepted positions lower than management. At that time, the institution didn’t have any women working in higher positions.
Noticing that, not only in my company but in the Brazilian financial sector in general, the perspectives for higher positions for women were rare, and as a job-oriented person with no intent in having children, I felt limited by this inequality. When I discovered that my total income was 45% less than men coworkers at the same level, I started to rethink my professional path.
“To remain silent and accept inequalities, is also to take a stand that reinforces the current status quo”.
Building my own space
I always had the desire to make a huge impact on people’s lives and leave a legacy. And when I started to put my time, energy, and knowledge into the service of others, everything made sense, and I started my journey of Financial with Purpose.
In Brazil, women represent only 28% of the investors in local Exchange. They represent only 21% in financial volume, although their average ticket of investments is almost 60% bigger than men’s.
At FCP, we have the same percentage of women and men as clients, but the women are usually in higher positions in other sectors, while men work in more diverse sectors and have lower positions. There is a mentality that “investment is not for me” or “it is necessary a huge amount of money to become an investor”, which is not true and puts women away from good investments and portfolio strategies.
Encourage confidence with money
The results in specialized research show that Brazilian women prefer to get financial guidance on social media while, to take care of their beauty, they seek specialists. The absence of diversity in financial markets impoverishes cognitive diversity, and as a result, decreases the value of communication and the ability to promote empathy and show women that “Yes! You can be an investor and conquer financial freedom on equal footing with men.”
I believe that is a natural tendency to reduce gender inequality in the local financial market because there are numerous initiatives to give women a voice in the labor market and encourage confidence with money. But in order to achieve the goal for sustainable development, we still have to fight for dialogue and equal opportunities, keeping in mind that the omission is also taking a stand.
Author: Thabata Abreu, Founder and Financial Advisor at FCP Financial Planning and Investments (LinkedIn Profile)
