Financial planner opens female-friendly business
By Joanne MacDonald, Weekly Journal

An Orléans-based financial planner has set up her own practice to specifically target the financial needs of women.

Judy Cane, formerly of Wealth Strategies, said her new company, which will be operating as Antara Financial Group, will fill a particular niche in the Ottawa marketplace.

"There's nobody else in Ottawa who does this -- nobody markets to women except me," said Cane.

She decided to open the company after spending three years building a financial planning practice with primarily women clients.

Noting that "women find it difficult to find female-friendly places," when it comes to finances, Cane said she "wanted to create a women's financial planning center that would include connections or a network to female-friendly services related to anything to do with women's financial matters. It could be bankers, mortgage brokers, debt managers, you name it. And I wanted do it under my own umbrella."

She's not sure why women find it difficult to find female-friendly financial institutions, but added that "men become very patronizing to women who are single, whether they're divorced, widowed or never married. They have this urge to take care of them," whether the female client wants that type of help or not.

"I find women want the information, they want the time to digest it and then they want the time to act on it," said Cane. "They don't need to be told, 'Don't worry, I'll take care of it.'"

After women have had a chance to either take Cane's investment seminars or sit down and talk with her about their financial matters, they soon come to the point where they understand exactly what their investment documents are all about, she said.

Cane also stressed that she doesn't plan to strictly limit herself to female clients. She already has "quite a few" male clients on her roster and she also works with women and their spouses. "It's really important to know that when a couple is together, one person usually takes over the financial issues of the couple," she said. "Even though that happens, the other spouse should sit down on a quarterly basis and get to understand where their...investments are, what the (overall) plan is."

Among some of the services Cane offers is budget planning (or she'll refer them to other people who specialize in that), investment planning and retirement planning. She noted that she charges fees for the plans that she draws up for clients.

Cane can be contacted by e-mail at judith@antarafinancial.com or by phone at (613) 291-9623; her website is slated to be online by mid-September.

"Our industry is highly regulated, so I have to go through two levels of regulators to get it (the website) approved," said Cane.