The UK’s investment management sector is “suffering from a severe lack of female representation”, despite several initiatives to improve diversity, according to KPMG.
A survey of annual reports issued by 16 financial services companies found that 15% of company board members were women, and only 4% of executive directors were women.
The low numbers come in spite of a number of initiatives aimed at improving the gender balance on company boards. The European Commission has set a target for female representation on boards of 40% by 2020, while the 30% Club—chaired by Newton Investment Management CEO Helena Morrissey—has been working since 2010 for a similar cause.
“We will only really take a quantum leap towards better gender balance when organisations treat this as a mainstream, not a ‘diversity’, issue.”—Melanie Richards, partner and vice chair, KPMG
Specific to the UK, in 2011 Labour peer Evan Davies published a report into female representation on boards that claimed it would take 70 years to achieve gender balance at the top corporate level, given the current rate of change.
Lord Davies set a target of 25% by 2015, but KPMG said UK asset managers still had “some way to go to meet such aspirational targets”.
Aberdeen Asset Management led the way, according to the new report, with four female directors on its board, or 29% of board members. Of the 16 listed fund management houses analysed, only one—Impax Asset Management—had no women on its board.
However, at the executive director level, only three groups had any female representation: Aberdeen, retail investment broker Hargreaves Lansdown, and currency management specialist Record.
Melanie Richards, partner and vice chair at KPMG, said “considerable progress” had been made towards greater diversity: “There is not one member of the FTSE 100 without female representation in the boardroom, the proportion of companies edging closer to Lord Davies’ target is edging up, and changes are clear to see in many of the UK’s leading industries.”
Richards added that companies were beginning to realise that “greater inclusivity opens doors to a wider pool of talent”, which in turn could lead to improved performance as boards reflect the make-up of their target markets more accurately.
“Our report reveals that UK investment managers still have some way to go to match these levels, yet we will only really take a quantum leap towards better gender balance when organisations treat this as a mainstream, not a ‘diversity’, issue,” she said.
A separate survey, published in November by think tank New Financial, painted a more positive picture in the pensions sector. According to the firm’s data, four of the five largest European financial institutions with the best top-level female representation were pension funds.
Related Content: The Missing Women of Asset Management & Video: Asset Management’s Women Problem