Paul Smith
Former Global CEO and President, CFA Institute
Despite the best of intentions, there’s little evidence that diversity is improving in the industry. I firmly believe that businesses need to set formal quotas by gender and by ethnicity if we are to change hiring practices that today clearly entrench academic and social biases—unconscious or conscious.
Diversity doesn’t work in finance primarily because recruitment policies are geared toward hiring young people from a small, select group of schools. These schools tend to draw their students from an equally predictable pool. Finance needs to be more deliberate in reaching out beyond its traditional hunting grounds.
Luke Ellis
CEO, Man Group PLC • London
The reality is that the industry was on the wrong side of progress for a long time—30 years ago, much of the industry was openly sexist, homophobic, and racist. This left a huge hole in the pipeline of diverse talent as quality people were either put off by the industry and never joined or rightly left the industry.
Dennis Mitchell
CEO, Starlight Capital • Toronto
My own experience in the wealth and asset management industries is that a lot of the recruiting is done either through personal networks—so you’re delving back into where you went to school or your alumni network—and/or you hear that age-old adage, “We only recruit from the best schools.”
Lauren Cochran
Managing Director, Blue Haven Initiative • Washington
The industry echo chamber focuses on the question, “Did we make more money than last year?”—confirming the system in a vicious cycle even as traditional banking businesses are less and less lucrative. When bonuses become dependent on the question, “Are you making money and have you taken advantage of the skills that come with hiring a group of people that don’t all think alike and have different worldviews?” then things will change, and people will probably make more money. There’s a mountain of data to back that up.
Peter Harrison
Group Chief Executive Officer, Schroders PLC • London
I am a firm believer in the importance of data and analytics to improve our decision-making, and in the last 12 months we have campaigned for our people to tell us more about themselves and complete their diversity profiles. It is only with this data that we are able to direct our resources to make the changes with the biggest impact.
Our decision, several years ago now, for Schroders to communicate our gender pay gap—ahead of statutory requirements—reflected my belief that data transparency is key to driving real change. With progress on diversity metrics linked to pay outcomes for senior management, we are holding our people accountable for addressing this role representation gap, as well as diversity and inclusion more broadly.
Wes Hall
Executive Chairman and Founder, Kingsdale Advisors • Toronto
(Hall Founded The Canadian Council of Business Leaders Against Anti-Black Systemic Racism)
Companies, for example, say, “I am going to put a diversity policy in place.” And they put a woman in that position, and that’s great. But I’m a Black man, and my civil rights were violated, and I’m coming to work in the morning. How would she understand my problem and what happened to me and the psychological trauma that I went through as a result of that experience as a Black man? So wouldn’t it be nice to have another person within that organization that shares the same role that I can now go to and talk to and can counsel me because I just experienced a trauma?
We have people who are putting things in place that don’t understand me. And they think they do by putting these systems in place. If we’re there, then when they are making policies we can say, “No, that doesn’t apply.”
Bhavini “Bev” Shah
Founder and CEO, City Hive Network • London
The chief risk officer should be having sleepless nights over the lack of diversity. Boards who take representative and cognitive diversity seriously have recognized that it brings results in performance and decision-making, as well as having a positive impact on brand and revenue. The solution lies in not picking one diverse group to focus on but investing in real solutions to help build a diverse industry where everyone can thrive regardless of race, gender, sexuality, or anything else. Only then will we truly have the best talent.