Ladies, it’s time to give your finances a workout.

That’s the conclusion of a major study into the way women invest — sort of.

ING Direct’s Women in Finance White Paper found that the fairer sex, while taking an increasingly active role in financial matters — and likely to be the main beneficiary of $2.4 trillion set to shift from one generation to the next in coming decades — was failing to optimise its investments.

Choosing the safer option at the expense of bigger returns, the paper found, women stand to lose out in the long run, potentially shaving hundreds of thousands of dollars off superannuation accounts.

“Women have a strong appetite for certainty, security and longevity — they don’t want to put their capital at risk,” said ING executive director of customer delivery Lisa Claes, the paper’s author.

“But I believe if they are better served, they will evolve up the spectrum. If you better serve their needs, they’ll become like men.”

Ms Claes said while the health and wellbeing industries were brilliant at marketing to women, finance got a big fat F.

Work it: Michelle Bridges knows how to connect with female customers. Picture: Channel 10Source:Supplied

Fitness guru Michelle Bridges and body love advocate Kylie Ryan engage female customers with sassy websites complete with videos, language that’s on-point and interactive forums where women can discuss, dissect and motivate each other.

But where are the wealth creation specialists taking this approach? There are plenty of mindset-based wealth coaches in this space — with dubious credentials — but not so many licensed, professional financial advisers.

This is the gap in the market which Ms Claes says needs to be filled.

Essentially, given the opportunity to attack financial decisions they way they discuss their lifestyle goals, women would become more comfortable with more sophisticated investment strategies.

“Women aren’t going to stash all their money under their beds,” Ms Claes said.

“But, because there is this very strong trait of conservatism in the way women invest, and they’re not being serviced in the way they’d prefer, they are not optimising the wealth they’ll have in their purse.”

She said that given the choice of how to spread risk in their superannuation portfolios, women with an ING super account showed a clear trend of opting for a large proportion of low-risk investment and only a tiny amount of shares — a trend anecdotally echoed by other providers.

“Women tend to favour cash, as a defensive product. They’ll choose predominantly cash, a little indexed fund and very little equities (shares).”

Women crave stability — but that doesn’t mean they can’t be daring.Source:Supplied

The share market is where the biggest gains can be made, but they carry a higher risk. However, giving them only a minimal role was not necessarily the best investment strategy, Ms Claes said.

The difference over a woman’s working life could be substantial, she said, with a cash-heavy portfolio likely to deliver hundreds of thousands of dollars less for retirement.

And with women set to take the reins of more and more wealth — both their own and that of partners who die before them, plus family inheritances — there is a lot of money at stake. A large chunk of $2.4 trillion over the next 30 years, to be precise.

Ms Claes said women wanted three things from the financial services industry: information, validation and dialogue.

That’s where the comparison with the wellness industry comes in.

“Women are connectors — more so than men,” she said. “They want more information before they make a decision; they like to bounce it off someone. This doesn’t change when it comes to financial services.”

But the industry was “largely created for men”, she said, and the way products were marketed had not caught up with the times.

“The language of finance is complex and not geared for the way the female brain likes to consume information,” Ms Claes said.

“The industry really needs to tap into and harness the female psyche.”

She said innovation was needed to gear financial products to the increasing number of single women, such as co-buying for those struggling to buy property on a single income.

And those in a primary carer role could benefit from superannuation products that allowed women to pause their account while off work, avoiding unnecessary fees.

ING’s research found that women took an active role in financial matters, with 93 per cent either the main financial decision-maker or a joint decision-maker.

But only 84 per cent said they would be confident in taking on all financial decisions, and just 31 per cent said they currently received professional financial advice.

And of those who pondered coming into a substantial inheritance, only 35 per cent said they would go to a financial planner.

“Women identify with feeling a responsibility to preserve wealth, particularly inherited wealth, and to leave a legacy for the next generation,” Ms Claes said.

Perhaps if a few tweaks are made to the financial planning industry, they will find the perfect balance.

Newscorp’s Money Saver HQ can help you compare superannuation providers with comparison tables and tips on how to maximise returns.