Financial Services Still 98 Per Cent

New figures, shared by Rob Manilla, Chief Investment Officer at Kresge Foundation, a US socially minded grant foundation, state that 98 per cent of the financial services industry is still run by white men.

Writing in the Financial Times and reported in HRGrapevine, Rob explains that, despite the best attempts of the GBP 54 trillion sector to position itself as a diverse industry, the statistics show a different story.

Only one in eight hedge funds is led by a woman or person of colour, and those funds only control 5 per cent of the wealth in that space. Research from Barclays and the Knight Foundation shows that hedge funds with diverse ownership perform just as well or better than other non-diverse financial vehicles.

Leadership diversity is still a pressing issue. While many firms are doing much better at diverse entry-level recruitment, it still appears that white males are ending up in the top jobs.

Only 40 per cent of firms disclose the ethnicity of their directors. Yet, according to the study, about 60 per cent of firms say that they consider general and ethnicity when assessing director candidates. UK research, conducted by executive search and interim management provider, Green Park, found that nearly six in ten boardrooms don’t have an ethnic minority presence.

Amber Rudd, UK Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, delivered a speech at the start of 2019 explaining that despite women making up over half of university students and almost half of the working population, they are still under-represented at board level.

“Having fewer women than men in leadership positions makes no sense. We know for instance that organisations with the highest levels of gender diversity in their leadership teams are 15 per cent more likely to outperform their industry rivals,” she told senior female City execs in January 2019.