‘Murky disparity’ stalls progress  

Women appear to be making some advance in the broad financial advice industry, with an increase in the numbers of women getting the certified financial planning designation last year just one example of that.   

There are roughly 320,000 working brokers and financial advisors in the United States, and for years women have been underrepresented; they make up about 20% of the financial advisors working right now.   

But recent claims of pay discrimination, retaliation and sexual harassment by Genevieve Sisco, a former recruiter at Advisor Group, now Osaic, underscore that change in the financial advice industry may come in fits and starts.   

In her complaint, which was filed in federal court in Iowa at the end of August, Sisco alleges she was fired in 2022 by Advisor Group and the broker-dealer where she worked, SagePoint Financial Inc., for complaining about her pay and compensation, along with her role in the investigation of an allegedly personal relationship in the office of senior management.   

“The company fired Sisco in retaliation for her protected complaints regarding pay equity as well as for her participation in the company’s investigation into sexual misconduct by the romantic partner of the current CEO,” the complaint alleges.   

In contrast to Sisco’s allegations, Advisor Group, which rebranded as Osaic, has purposefully worked to promote women, assembling a leadership team in which six of the 14 senior executive positions are filled by women, as InvestmentNews noted last year.   

While the financial advice industry publicly clamors for diversity, many large firms have a poor history of hiring women, along with minorities. But according to InvestmentNews data, Advisor Group reported that 33.4% of its financial advisors were women in 2021, well above the industry’s average.   

“It’s impossible to say we work in an industry that’s always been welcoming to women,” said one senior female financial advisor at a major firm who spoke confidentially to InvestmentNews because of the sensitivity of the topic. “If you look at the industry today, we’ve come a long way, but there’s still plenty more to do. 

“On the retail side of the industry, I’d love to see more women,” she added. “But only about a third of the seats on the boards of S&P 500 companies are women, so there’s lots of room in this business to improve.”   

One securities attorney, Jenice Malecki, said that there is still plenty of pay disparity on Wall Street between men and women employees at a variety of firms.   

“I still get a lot of calls from women who have pay discrepancy issues and face the glass ceiling,”  
Malecki said. “Certain strides have been made for women but more at a macro level or at the largest firms, but there is plenty of pay inequity at those same firms, which have smaller offices or outposts around the country. Are employees being treated the same in Houston and New York City? That might not be the case.   

“There isn’t any pay transparency, so people don’t know if they’re making the same amount of money as the person sitting next to them,” she said. “And not all employees are willing to push back. Unfortunately, there is still a lot of murky disparity out there.”  

Financial advisors at large firms like the former Advisor Group are all paid according to the same pay scheme, known as a grid. The uniform pay scale, particularly at independent broker-dealers like Advisor Group, would likely make it difficult for firms to shortchange one group of financial advisors over another in this day and age.   

But differences in wages and pay can certainly exist among employees, including recruiters like Sisco. And a disparity in compensation between male colleagues and Sisco, a senior vice president of recruiting at SagePoint Financial, is one of the key parts of her claims against Advisor Group and the broker-dealer.   

“Unfortunately, the Company did not reward Sisco’s success as it would have if she were a man,” according to her complaint. “In 2019, Sisco learned that one of her male counterparts had a base salary that significantly exceeded her pay even though they had the same role.  

“Sisco repeatedly complained, to no avail, about the pay disparity throughout 2019, 2020 and 2021,” the complaint alleges. “She also complained, throughout her time as [senior vice president of recruiting] that the company was underpaying her direct reports, many of whom are women and people of color, relative to their white and male peers.”  

Sisco worked at SagePoint from 2008 to 2022, when she was fired. She now works at a rival to Advisor Group, Cetera Advisors.   

“Despite Sisco’s success at SagePoint, the Company consistently underpaid Sisco relative to Sisco’s male peers,” according to the complaint.   

In one instance, a former colleague who worked as a senior vice president of recruiting for another Advisor Group broker-dealer told Sisco in 2019 that he had earned $200,000, which was significantly more than Sisco, whose salary that year was about $125,000.   

Sisco declined to comment for this article when reached via LinkedIn. Her attorney, Jeremiah Iadevaia, did not return calls to comment.   

Advisor Group filed a motion to dismiss Sisco’s federal complaint on Oct. 9.   

Meanwhile, Sisco earlier had filed a similar complaint with Iowa. And in June, the Iowa Civil Rights Commission said that “further investigation” into her claims was not warranted, noting that, in the case of unequal pay between her and other employees, “the evidence provided demonstrates that the co-workers were not similarly situated” to Sisco.   

“Advisor Group and SagePoint deny all the claims brought by Ms. Sisco-Hodges,” David Barton, counsel for Osaic, wrote in an email. “Each of these claims was reviewed in detail and dismissed by the Iowa Civil Rights Commission. The Commission’s report vindicates our own review of Ms. Sisco-Hodges’ claims, which we contend are unfounded.”