Written by:
James Berkow
THE GLOBE & MAIL
June 24, 2022
📰 Read the FULL ARTICLE here.
Read an excerpt below.
When Cindy Marques first entered Canada’s wealth management industry in 2016, the first thing she noticed was its homogeneity.
“It was all a bunch of older white men who didn’t represent who I was or who I wanted to serve,” says Ms. Marques, now a certified financial planner and chief executive officer of Money MakeCents Inc. in Toronto.
As a member of the 2SLGBTQ+ community – she identifies as queer and describes the financial services industry’s culture as “very stiff professionalism.”
During her training with a major national brokerage, “they would tell me not to give up too much of myself, not to connect too much with the client, as if dishing out a personal detail somehow makes the advisor seem less competent and professional.”
That culture makes it more difficult for advisors who are members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community to share that part of their identity, Mr. Marques says. Evidence of that resistance came earlier this year when through her capacity as a board member of the Toronto chapter of the Financial Advisors Association of Canada – known as Advocis – she asked other members of the community to share their stories and experiences.
“I was speaking to a room of 200 people at the time and got nothing, crickets,” Mr. Marques says. “Nobody reached out after the fact either.”
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