Nearly 60% of money managers globally consider diversity an important factor to their teams' success, according to a survey by Redington.
Yet, of the 44% of managers that assess racial diversity within their teams, Redington's survey found that 52% have no Black representatives on their investment teams. Out of the managers that measure racial diversity, 13% of the investment teams consisted of white employees only and a further 68% of teams were predominantly white.
"This data makes for uncomfortable reading and should make every organization stop and question itself, particularly on areas such as whether there is a lack of people in the pipeline, and if so, what they can do to combat these issues and ensure they're making themselves appealing and accessible to a more diverse range of candidates," Nick Samuels, head of manager research at Redington, said in an emailed comment.
The U.K. consultant surveyed 104 managers with more than $10 trillion in total assets under management, covering 192 strategies across asset classes such as equities, credit, private debt, property and infrastructure, discovering that 96% of these money management firms had a companywide responsible investment policy in place.
Redington's survey also found that 77% of managers measure gender diversity on their teams and 11% of managers have no female representation on investment teams.
Some 73% of the surveyed managers expect environmental, social and governance integration in their processes to contribute positively to the financial performance of their strategy, while some 15% said there wasn't sufficient evidence of ESG impact. A further 11% had a neutral position on the ESG impact.
Still, 59% of managers have a dedicated staff for responsible investment and 50% of managers have set individual performance objectives linked to ESG. Some 74% of managers have integrated ESG datasets into the same platform used for traditional investment analysis.
