A New Era of Financial Empowerment for Women

And this is a missed opportunity for all involved – for the female clients who don’t get a financial professional that meets them where they’re at, and for the financial professional who doesn’t earn their business.

To help financial professionals provide tailored solutions for women, a group of women at Securian Financial worked together and launched a new marketing campaign and sales toolkit called “Own it” in early 2025. We sat down with Nancy Cooke, Securian Financial’s National Sales Vice President who played a key role in developing and launching this campaign to find out how this campaign can make a difference in your producers’ businesses and their clients’ lives.

Q: How did the idea for “Own it” come about?

A: With the financial services industry being predominantly men, we’ve felt there’s been a gap in the tools that are available for women. At the financial professional level, we wanted to help women grow their businesses and careers and give men the tools they need to be successful when working with women. At the customer level, we wanted to empower women on their financial journeys.

Q: How can Brokerage General Agencies (BGAs) and their marketers incorporate this campaign into their daily routine?

A: Marketers can bring this into their daily conversations with their agents, reminding them that there is no single experience that defines every woman’s life, needs or priorities. It’s an opportunity to educate their agents that the “conventional” sales approach might not always resonate with how many women prefer to make their financial decisions. By adjusting their sales approach to each individual client, they are building trust and relationships and hopefully retaining those clients long into their retirement years. I always think about the agent I talked to who said, “When you have a husband and wife as clients and you primarily work with the husband, what happens if he passes first? Have you given her a reason to keep her business with you?”

Q: What is your favorite sales tool and what tips do you have for using it?

A: The landing page alone is great, securian.com/own-it. It’s home to a lot of great materials to help agents understand the different needs of this market and it has materials that are designed to empower female consumers on their financial journey. There are also tips to help financial professionals foster a more authentic and collaborative sales experience with women. I’m most excited about the materials we have for female financial professionals to help them take their practice to the next level.

Q: You’ve touched on this already, but to really bring it home: why is a campaign like “Own it” important?

A: It’s important because the women’s market is huge and often overlooked in our industry or even untouched sometimes. Recent research expects women in the U.S. to control $34 trillion in financial assets by 2030.¹ Let that sink in. We all have women in our lives, whether it’s a mother, daughter, sister, aunt, or best friend, and they’re all in different stages of their lives. If we can help set them up for success and help them create a financially secure future, why wouldn’t we?