Another Schwab leads push for female investors

Carrie Schwab Pomerantz was leading a quiet life until a light bulb clicked on in her mind about three years ago.

She was having dinner with her famous father, Charles, and an old female friend who had just come into a large amount of cash. The woman asked the founder of the nation’s largest discount brokerage how best to manage her newfound riches.

During the course of the conversation, Ms. Pomerantz, 41, realized that millions of women must be facing the same questions about their own finances.

She responded by allowing her name to be used – for the first time ever – for a business initiative.

Ms. Pomerantz’s name is now synonymous with the promotion of women’s investing at Charles Schwab & Co., the brokerage subsidiary of Charles Schwab Corp.

It was something for which she felt uniquely suited. In her own household, she says, she and her journalist husband practice a reversal of roles. She masterminds the finances and pays bills, while he helps their three children with homework.

But she also believes she can extend to women her father’s legacy of removing the secretive old-boy network as an obstacle for the average investor.

seminars planned

At Ms. Pomerantz’s urging, Charles Schwab & Co. is now training hundreds of its female employees to give seminars at about 400 branches in an effort to close the “confidence gap” between men and women.

In a Harris Poll completed for Schwab, 48% of women responded that “investing is scary for me” versus just 24% of men. This is borne out at Schwab, where only a third of the customers are women.

“We’re playing some catch-up,” says Ms. Pomerantz, the brokerage unit’s vice president of consumer education.

If female investors find their confidence, it could also prove to be a boon for independent advisers. Schwab surveys show that 57% of women would prefer to delegate investment management to a professional adviser, versus 38% of men.

The issue is more relevant than ever, according to a Schwab spokeswoman, as women are drawn into the investment arena by the rise of 401(k) plans.

Before Ms. Pomerantz could set the program into motion, she needed to close her own career-confidence gap. Though she has worked on and off with her father’s company since 1976, Ms. Pomerantz has always been content to work in branch offices in such locations as Washington and Atlanta, now her home city.

Though at times she quietly aided in fashioning corporate branching strategy, she also answered phones, opened accounts and used her married name, Pomerantz, to avoid attracting too much attention.

“I’ve kept somewhat of a low profile,” she says.

But with the desire to address financial issues on behalf of women, she has finally thrust herself onto the national stage.

The dilemma of whether to take advantage of being the boss’ daughter is one with which she has long struggled. After college, she worked for a company that leased cargo containers to shipping companies. When that proved unrewarding, she decided to go back into the financial services business.

“In the back of my mind, I was thinking I might go to Merrill Lynch [& Co. Inc.] or something,” she says. “I was trying to be independent.”

Her thinking changed after a female friend at Charles Schwab convinced her that it was silly to stray from her family and her business roots.

But after getting her master’s degree in business administration from George Washington University in 1987, she again decided to try an independent career – this time with an insurance company in Atlanta.

Yet after three years, she wondered whether the company’s interests were aligned with the customers’.

“I never felt right about it,” she says.

Now firmly back in the fold at Charles Schwab & Co., she says working with her father is a completely positive experience.

“He’s a big cheerleader for me in my job and in my life,” she says.

But Mr. Schwab’s success in promoting opportunities for average investors has always led to profits for his company. With its traditional trading markets beginning to mature, he would no doubt cheer his daughter’s success in emboldening gun-shy female investors.