EQ Bank aims to boost women's financial confidence

Equitable Bank (EQ Bank) has launched a platform called Stnce, to help boost women’s financial confidence.

As part of the platform, the company will host a series of events throughout 2018 that will feature female advisors addressing the issue of women continuing to doubt their own financial knowledge.

Why that’s important

Fewer than two in 10 women say they should play a different role than men when it comes to managing household finances, says a new poll from EQ Bank. What’s more, Canadian women and men have similar levels of financial knowledge; according to the poll, female respondents scored 60% on a financial literacy quiz while men scored 71%.

The persistent issue is women continue to doubt their money-managing skills. The poll finds, compared to men, female respondents are significantly less confident about their financial knowledge (31% to 49%) and less satisfied with their financial knowledge (38% to 55%).

There are many reasons this needs to change, one of which is Canadian women are expected to control nearly half of all accumulated financial wealth in the country by 2026, according to an Investment Planning Counsel (IPC) white paper that was released in summer 2017. That paper also highlights the growing number of widows and divorced women in Canada, which reached about 2.5 million in 2015 (17% of adult females).

Read: Get ready for more single women clients

About the survey: Conducted on behalf of EQ Bank by Environics Research Group, the survey polled a nationally representative sample of 1,125 Canadians, who answered 52 questions based on financial confidence and knowledge, financial topics of interest, and how the respondents like to learn about financial topics. The poll was conducted from Oct. 4 to Oct. 12, 2017.

For more on women and the financial industry, read:

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