Hanging Landscape Of Women And Finance

Whoever said women weren’t good with money haven’t met Jesslyn Tan. The CEO of Great Eastern Financial Advisers shares her insights on the changing landscape of women and finance.

- Charmian Leong

Women today control a third of the world’s wealth, adding US$5 trillion (S$6.8 trillion) to the global wealth pool every year. And according to Boston Consulting Group, this number will rise to US$97 trillion by 2024. These are heartening figures that many will attribute to the growing number of female entrepreneurs and women in STEM — you know, the ones who grab headlines with their social impact investing and world-changing research.

But let’s not forget that there are women working behind the scenes that have played just as significant a role in this global shift. Women who have worked tirelessly in the financial advisory landscape to ensure people’s wealth and health are either growing or safeguarded. Women who have stubbornly forged their own path through a male-dominated industry to emerge at the very top. Women like Jesslyn Tan.

Tan is CEO and a founding member of Great Eastern Financial Advisers (GEFA), Singapore’s first financial advisory firm to be affiliated with a life insurer. Her career with Great Eastern began in 2001, where her role as Head of Centre for Excellence involved overseeing the training and recruitment for financial representatives. A decade later, she was approached by the top brass to take up a pioneering role for GEFA.

“The hybrid business model and its winning formula appealed to my entrepreneurial instincts,” she says, explaining how a company that could combine the strength of a large insurance firm with the wider offering of financial advisory products would enable her to reach out to more people with much-needed holistic, value-added services.