In October last year, I wrote about widening the corporate playing field. My article highlighted the benefits diversity can have for company financial performance, and described how, as an Investment Management team, we discuss diversity with fund managers as part of our due diligence process. We look for thoughtful consideration of diversity, and evidence that firms take the need to improve their policies to hire and retain more diverse colleagues seriously.
To measure the progress being made, and to celebrate this year’s International Women’s Day theme, #choose to challenge, we surveyed 48 of the fund managers we work with in our core Parmenion solutions.
We found that small positive steps have been taken by our fund managers during 2020 to improve gender representation.
In summary, we see some reasons for optimism:
- More female hires in portfolio manager and analyst roles during 2020, improving the gender split versus 2019.
- Fewer sole male portfolio managers and significantly more mixed portfolio management teams for our funds on average compared to the average reported in Citywire’s Alpha Female 2020
There’s a long way to go. We will share these results with our fund managers, as well as continuing to ask questions to encourage positive behaviour and a real commitment to positive change. Because that’s what happens when you #choosetochallenge.