Nike Anani has extensive experience in helping family businesses with succession planning. As a second-generation family business owner and leader, Nike has over a decade of family business expertise in Nigeria. She is dedicated to building generational bridges in family enterprises to ensure future-focused organizations that leave a lasting legacy.
In addition to pioneering her own family office, she is also the co-founder of African Family Firms, a pan-African association of family businesses.
Nike studied Economics at University College London and is an accountant (ex-Deloitte UK). She sits on the boards of several companies, including Mixta Real Estate Plc and ARM-Harith Infrastructure Fund.
Here is an excerpt from her post “Empowering women in family offices through learning, governance and allyship” originally published on the Simple blog.
Empowering Women in Family Businesses
Family offices today must embrace diversity, inclusion, and the empowerment of women if they are to thrive. Our twenty-first-century business world is highly disruptive and challenging, and diversity of thought is key to navigating these successfully. We explore how families can involve female members in wealth decision-making.
Historically, family businesses were owned by men, as wives and daughters were often explicitly prohibited from ownership and management of the business due to social norms. Decisions on which child would succeed the founder often defaulted to primogeniture, whereby the firstborn son would inherit management and ownership.
As the M&A market matured, families increasingly sought to sell their businesses; they would often use the proceeds of the sale to start a family office. Unfortunately, these gender biases continued with this evolution from family business to family office; women continued to be excluded from wealth transfer and management discussions.
Family Businesses Today
Today there is a changing tide and a fading of patriarchal systems, such that we are seeing upward mobility of females in family offices. Despite the fact that many families are now allowing for females to inherit wealth, many of these women stay “silent”. Barclays Private Bank research highlights that a gender gap still persists today, as 70% of women are not involved in family wealth decisions and are four times more likely than men not to be involved in family business decisions.
We are on the precipice of the largest intergenerational wealth transfer in history; approximately $30 trillion will be inherited by the rising generation. Many of these future wealth owners will be women. However, many of them are yet to discover their voices. This is a great disservice to not only families, but also to our future world.
The inclusion of female voices is critical. That’s because women are more likely than men to take communities into consideration when making business and/or wealth decisions. This hour calls for such decision-making as family offices find themselves in a world that is laden with social challenges.
The effective collaboration of male and female voices will maximize the impact of family offices and speed up the transition to more conscious capitalism. Increasingly investors are expected to use their wealth to affect social change and maximize both financial and social returns. This can only happen when women discover and project their voices.
Luckily, there are ways that families can invite women into the decision-making process and empower them to use their voices.
Structured Learning
Research has suggested that there is a gender-confidence gap; women tend to be less confident than their male counterparts, even when they are equally as competent. As a result, women tend to underestimate their abilities. Only two out of five women state that they are confident making financial decisions, according to a report by UBS.
In addition, they tend to wrongly interpret their male counterparts’ display of confidence as evidence of greater competence than themselves. Consequently, they are less likely to want to try new things and take risks. Female family members who may not have been exposed to conversations on wealth and business may therefore be intimidated and reluctant to venture into new territory due to lack of confidence.
As a result, they may defer financial decision-making to their brothers, fathers, and husbands, who appear to be more confident, whilst the women grow more and more silent. It’s no surprise then that Credit Suisse has reported that women are more risk-averse than men, demonstrate less investment knowledge, and feel less confident when making investment decisions.
The key to solving this problem is by firstly acknowledging the conditions which have created this scenario. The next is to improve inclusivity through structured learning for all family members in order to even out the playing field for both genders. This structured learning should address finance, investing, leadership, and behavioral skills to help build confidence.
The mode of learning is also critical. Creating an environment that has psychological safety at its core is essential. Women often desire learning guides that are empathetic, patient, and good listeners. As such, highly customized learning that is 1:1 and a blend of coaching and training is often successful in helping women build their confidence.