Is private banking and wealth management still dominated by men?
Definitely.
But a recent glut of high-level female hires points to a new direction of travel, as women look set to hold a larger share of the world’s wealth.
Private banking and wealth management firms that cater to high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients are seeing a shift in leadership. Some of Britain’s most prestigious private banking institutions and wealth management firms, responsible for managing hundreds of billions of pounds, have appeared more prepared to appoint women to top leadership roles over the last year or so.
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Boardroom glass cracks
Emma Crystal took over as Coutts CEO in July 2024, overseeing £48.9 billion in assets under management, while Kim Jenson became interim CEO of Charles Stanley, with £40 billion in AuM, in April 2025. Sasha Wiggins was appointed CEO of Barclays Private Bank and Wealth – which boasts £183 billion in client assets and liabilities – in February 2024, while Camilla Stowell took over as CEO of Wealth at the £100 billion-AuM Rathbones in June 2025.
[See also: Women’s wealth is growing – here’s why advisers need to keep up]
Annabel Spring moved from CEO of HSBC Global Private Banking and Wealth to another top role at B2B WealthTech Allfunds in June 2025. Looking to Q3 of 2025, JP Morgan UK will welcome a female head of private banking, Marice Brown.
At the same time, the industry remains heavily male-dominated and information on gender balance within individual firms can be difficult to come by. Just 24.7 per cent of the highly ranked UK-based wealth managers and private bankers in the Spear’s indices are women, suggesting that the industry has a long way to go if its aim is to have an even gender split in senior positions. (Overall, taking into account other jurisdictions, the figure is 22.2 per cent.)
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With small headcounts and no legal obligation to release stats on employees, private banks generally shy away from publishing staff gender representation figures. Rathbones voluntarily shares this information through its participation in the HM Treasury’s Women in Finance Charter, but others do not. The charter shows Rathbones increased its proportion of senior roles held by women from 15.6 per cent in 2018 to 33 per cent in 2023, though this dipped to 30.4 per cent as of September 2024. Its 2027 target is 35 per cent.
Despite these gains, systemic barriers endure, with self-reinforcing male-dominated networks and the complexities surrounding parental leave among the factors often cited as preventing women from being promoted to more senior positions.
April Rudin, CEO of US-based ultra-high-net-worth wealth management marketing firm Rudin Group, tells Spear’s that, as private banks move beyond investment returns and take a more holistic approach to managing families’ wealth, many women are finding that skills and traits that have traditionally been seen as more ‘female’ are in increasingly high demand. Tax and legacy planning, insurance and philanthropy are all areas in which, Rudin says, ‘many women excel’.
‘I think people are tired of seeing all these white guys sort of lined up on a company website, and now it’s beginning to look different,’ she says.
[See also: Women in power: Meet the 200 female leaders making waves]
Gina Le Prevost, the founder and CEO of global recruitment agency AP Executive, agrees. She believes wealth management firms increasingly want to show their clients that theirs is a workplace where women are appreciated and can succeed. ‘They don’t want their company to look old-fashioned and that men always get the best jobs,’ she says.
Holding the purse strings
The recent wave of women appointed to high-profile senior wealth roles aligns with growing awareness of women’s increasing grip on wealth control. According to a 2022 Altrata report, women represented just 11 per cent of UHNWs globally but that figure is on an upward trajectory, with both entrepreneurship and inheritance amid the Great Wealth Transfer set to be the key drivers of female-controlled top-tier wealth over the coming decades.
In 2025, a report into women’s growing wealth by McKinsey showed that in the US, female-controlled assets are projected to nearly double to $34 trillion – representing about 38 percent of total US assets – by 2030. The report also noted that women control around a third of all retail financial assets in the European Union and the United States, a share expected to reach 40-45 per cent by 2030. As well as growing through inheritance and entrepreneurship, women’s financial power in the UK is also growing through divorce and from holding more board positions, according to JM Finn Wealth Management.
‘There’s been a huge increase in female entrepreneurs, so women are not only inheriting money, but also creating their own wealth at really increasing rates,’ Rudin adds. ‘And that combination of power is giving women more access and more influence.’
‘The women have got the money so if you want to grow your book you need to go where the money is,’ says a Spear’s wealth industry insider who commented on the trend off the record. ‘It’s a case of go fish where the fish are.’
[See also: The untold history of women on Wall Street]
Shifting the balance
McKinsey’s research notes that wealthy women are less likely than men to work with financial advisers. Wealth holders are becoming younger and more diverse; in many cases they may feel more comfortable speaking to a wealth managers whose background has similarities with their own.
It’s hoped that the recent wave of senior female hires will ripple through the industry and boost representation more widely. But headwinds remain, not least in the form of President Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusion and the Financial Conduct Authority’s subsequent scrapping of rules it had planned to impose on financial firms to improve equality.
For Le Prevost, the working from home policies that emerged during Covid and have since persisted to a degree have radically altered the culture of knowledge worker employment in women’s favour. Juggling family life and work was simplified by cutting out lengthy commutes and office days, meaning mothers caring for children at home were better placed to succeed in the workplace and rise to top-level roles. ‘I believe the reason women are more in the workplace now and seen as more versatile is because companies allow them to work hybrid, work from home, or work in the office,’ Le Prevost says.
While it will take many more hires and work-from-home set-ups to truly level the playing field, the flurry of top-level female hires is a step in the right direction.
