The CII’s Insuring Women’s Futures Initiative has launched its 2019 manifesto and outlined guidance for financial services firms to help female financial resilience.
The manifesto outlined guidance for the government, regulators, employers, trade bodies and education establishments. It also included personal finance firms, pension providers and trusts.
To help financial resilience, the movement suggested equipping young women to make financially-informed study choices, reforming the earning eligibility thresholds for automatic enrolment and including the employer’s pension contribution in gender pay gap reporting.
Additionally, it recommended making pension sharing the default position in divorce and setting as a strategic priority for financial guidance bodies the promotion of gender inclusive financial engagement.
Some 150 experts from across insurance and related professions collaborated to create the manifesto.
Insuring Women’s Futures lead author and manifesto committee chair Jane Portas said: “We know some of the issues needing to be addressed are deep-rooted and will take time to have full effect. So we need to empower people to come together and to talk about financial life, our money and pensions.”
She said Insuring Women’s Futures is inviting everyone – mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters – to join the conversation, to become an ambassador and to help drive change.
Insuring Women’s Futures is an initiative led by the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) to promote and enhance the profession’s role in relation to women and risk.
Talk to 10,000
Elsewhere, the initiative has set a challenge to ‘Talk to 10,000‘ during Talk Money Week which commences 18 November, which requires ambassadors to meet and talk through the “moments that matter” in women’s lives with at least 10 women.
The challenge came after research carried out by Portas found many women still lack financial resilience and are often at a significant financial disadvantage to men.