Female bankers want to get their eggs frozen. These are their options
Balancing the demands of a high-powered finance career and a very natural desire to start a family is difficult, especially if you are a woman; pregnancy is a year-long process that can disrupt your career. And to make matters worse, it’s also time-constrained to your early adulthood. Luckily, there are women out there that have solutions for you.
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Flavia De Prezzo is the founder of Sopotion, a consultancy that specialises in supporting women going through the egg freezing process. De Prezzo works with women in high-powered industries such as banking and consulting around the world, and most of her clients are around 33 or 34 years old. “That’s the age when fertility will drop by 65%, and you feel like it is your last chance to do it,” De Prezzo said.
A report last year from the Diversity Project noted that pregnant women faced significant discrimination from their apparently well-intentioned male colleagues. There was also a perceived conflict between a woman’s career and having children in their early 30s: “if a woman has not made [portfolio manager], she likely never will and is viewed as a career analyst,” the report said. Pregnancy can very much get in the way of that ambition.
For De Prezzo, that career pressure is also tied to financial concerns. “Women want financial security,” she explained. “They finally feel like they are at a stage in life where they can afford a kid. They’re more mentally prepared as well, secure in their partnership or marriage. They feel like they’re ready to go to the next stage.”
Despite that, women often do not realise how egg freezing works, and rush into complicated medical procedures that can be quite traumatizing. “If you do it at 33 or 34,” De Prezzo explained, “it’s already a low success rate. You will probably need two cycles, which will be more expensive, and your body will react worse.” On the other hand, “the earlier you do it the better. It would be best to do it when you are 25, because your body reacts better – you would just need one cycle, and the number of eggs would be 90% higher than at 33.”
It can be difficult to keep up with life at the best of times, let alone for ambitious people. “The majority of women that are ambitious tend to be single,” De Prezzo mused. “They rarely feel like they can get a year or two of maternity leave. If we can preserve the fertility we have in our 20s, and conceive later on in life, we can better balance societal and career pressure.”
Most women keep their eggs frozen for five or six years, and the process after that is straightforward. “When they’re ready, if they’ve found a partner or want to be as single mother by choice, they will unfreeze the eggs and start the IVF cycle,” De Prezzo explained. The single mother option is a path already paved, with JPMorgan executive (and CEO succession candidate) Marianne Lake choosing to become a single mother at the age of 42, albeit with a surrogate. It’s not unheard of.
Options like that are not well-known, and neither is the cost of the egg freezing procedure. “There is a lot of misinformation about cost,” De Prezzo said. “People don’t know – if you’re under 34 [years old], don’t have serious medical issues, and your weight is in a certain band, you can actually freeze your eggs for free if you donate half of them. There are lots of options for women that don’t have a big budget, especially if they are younger.” That particular offer only applies to UK-based professionals.
The cost issue might not even be an issue at all for some professionals – most big banks offer packages to support family planning initiatives. At Morgan Stanley, for example, the bank offers a $75k stipend for “family building” – to assist with the cost of adoption, surrogacy and fertility treatments including both IVF and egg- and sperm-freezing with up to 12 months of storage included.
Morgan Stanley isn’t the only bank offering such a service. Citi has a similar program but only covering up to $24k. JPMorgan also offers up to $35k for “eligible fertility medical expenses.” There are a lot of options for professional women to freeze their eggs, with most programs global.
Most women, however, are not aware of their options. And they do not have support, both physical and emotional, which De Prezzo can offer. “I believe it is important. We provide a nutritional workbook as well, to prepare your body before, during, and after the freezing,” she said.
De Prezzo is based in Malaga, and usually points women in the direction of Spain or Czechia for the best-budgeted egg freezing clinics. She said she even meets all the women who come to Malaga for a treatment. “I love that part of it. That is where our real connection starts. It’s very satisfying for me.”
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