While it’s encouraging to see that our fund managers are still leading the way by continuing to employ more female portfolio managers than the industry average (Citywire Alpha Female 2023 report), very little progress has been reported in 2024.
Growing trends
Our latest study shows that fund managers are still underrepresented by women and people from ethnic minority backgrounds - but it’s to a lesser extent for investment analysts. Although we’re getting closer to a balance, it’s only in positions where there’s no decision-making responsibilities.
This also holds true at board level – board gender diversity has slightly improved from 33% of board members at our fund managers being female in 2022 to 35% in 2023. Positively though, almost half of the fund houses are exceeding the Hampton Alexander threshold - a recommendation for women to make up at least 40% of a board.
According to the FTSE Women Leaders Review, 42% of FTSE 350 companies already have women represented on boards but only 33.5% of those are in a leadership role.
And these rules are due to be reviewed in 2025 to make sure they're working.
New hires are always a good indication for moving towards greater diversity. Although numbers are down from last year, they’re still improved from the results of our first year’s report, so we hope to see this climb again.
What's not being shared
Unfortunately, due to data protection rules, a lot of fund houses are restricted in the data they can share. We’re also seeing more respondents stating ‘prefer not to say/non-binary’ in their gender responses.
The case for diversity
There’s a wealth of research showing that diverse teams are more creative, more innovative and more successful, and make everyone feel welcomed and respected. This inevitably leads to better outcomes for staff, customers and shareholders.
The results from our survey show there’s still a long way to go.
Transparency is key to affecting change so it’s excellent to see almost 70% of the fund houses reporting on their gender pay gaps. We’re particularly pleased to see that our results remain above industry average.
We’ll keep asking the questions and sharing the results, and hope we’ll have further progress to report next year. #InspireInclusion
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