Law firm’s new female-friendly support group
Mar 12 2008 by Karen Dent, The Journal
THE rising number of independently wealthy women has prompted the region’s biggest law firm to launch a specialist group of financial advisers.
Newcastle-based law firm Dickinson Dees has set up a female wealth management team, made up of women lawyers and financial advisers whose areas of expertise encompasses tax, corporate, inheritance, matrimonial and other financial disciplines.
Lawyer Deborah Jude, a probate expert and partner at Dickinson Dees, said: “There is a change that has been happening for a while in the position of women. They may find it useful to have a joined-up team but it’s not a case that you have to have an all-female team.
“It’s useful to offer them a female profile. You are talking to them from the same base really. First and foremost, you need good advice but this is about the relationship side of it.”
The team, believed to be the only such all-female group in the North, if not the UK, aims to serve a growing need in the market – women who are independently wealthy from men. Females are predicted to make up 53% of the UK’s millionaires by 2020, according to figures from Barclays Wealth.
“Some women are making it for themselves because they go into business. More women are setting up in business than men as a way to work around family commitments,” said Ms Jude.
“Also, women are becoming wealthy through inheritance or divorce, and there are more women in the professions. It’s no longer a surprise that women are being promoted.
“The only slight sticking point is that it’s the women who still have children and you can’t get away from that. But it isn’t a bar – childcare is now taken as a given.”
However, Ms Jude believes women still suffer from a lack of recognition that they are often the financial driving force in a partnership or that they are wealthy in their own right. She saw this at first hand when she added her partner’s name to a bank account, and the bank automatically put his name first on the account. A letter resolved the issue.
“You don’t want someone who looks to your husband or partner first,” she said.
Whereas businessmen have always done deals on the golf course or bonded at corporate trips to sports matches, businesswomen have not always had the same opportunities to network in environments they are enthusiastic about. The women’s wealth management team is trying to redress the balance by inviting clients to sessions such as a recent style event.
“It’s nice to know that the men don’t always have it all,” said entrepreneur Judith Harding, who runs an internet business, two jewellery businesses and also owns a number of properties jointly with her NHS executive husband.
Mrs Harding operates the Best of South Tyneside website franchise which provides webpages for local firms and provides business-to-business networking opportunities. Although she leaves the family’s complex joint finances to Peter, her husband of 23 years, Mrs Harding is in charge of her own business interests.
She said: “Whatever we’ve done, we’ve done together but from a business point of view, I do keep that separate. There are a growing number of women who do need to be financially independent.”
