There are considerably fewer female retail investors as women worry more about their finances, compared to their male counterparts in the UK, according to new research.

There are considerably fewer female retail investors, compared to their male counterparts in the UK, according to new research by Duncan Lawrie Private Bank. With 8.4 million adult men in the UK investing, women come in far below with only 5.8 million women in the United Kingdom having an investment portfolio.

Of those women that do not have an investment portfolio, almost one in five (17 per cent) said that the thought of investing is too worrying and they don’t want to lose any money, while 18 per cent said that they did not have enough confidence in their knowledge and understanding of investments to start a portfolio.

“Female investors have traditionally been at lower levels than men due to pay discrepancies and social imbalance. However, with women increasingly earning more and taking control over household finances, there really is no excuse for such a divide any more,” explained Richard Boyd, chartered financial planner at Duncan Lawrie Private Bank.

Generally, the investment industry seems hard-hit by gender bias. Only last week a study revealed that a majority of women in the asset management sector have experience sexual harassment in the workplace. Read more on that story, here. 

Women better at taking advice

However, despite the low number of women investing, the Duncan Lawrie study revealed that women who do invest are much more likely to seek advice from a financial advisor or bank to help manage their investments with over half of those with a portfolio saying that they seek the majority of their advice from these sources, compared to just 36 per cent of men.

“Clearly, many women are still put off by a perceived lack of knowledge and understanding, but with a good financial planner or investment manager, these fears can be overcome very easily,” added Boyd.

Lack of trust towards finance industry

In this respect, the study also revealed that trust in the financial services industry is still an issue for investors. As a nation, 78 per cent of UK people do not have an investment portfolio, with one of the leading reasons for this being trust. Almost one in five cited a “lack of trust in bankers and the economy as a reason for not investing”, the report said.

“While the economy is on a road to recovery the mind-set of many individuals is still heavily tainted due to events of the past. Recent regulation may have attempted to open up the world of investing to more consumers, but it does not seem to have had the desired effect. There is a lot more we can all do to help those people considering investing, including providing the right levels of education and advice to engender trust and a culture of long-term investing for the future,” said Boyd.

The research polled 2,059 adults and was conducted by YouGov on behalf of Duncan Lawrie Private Bank in late February 2013.