The Diversity Project set out enhanced targets for the investment industry to aim to achieve over the coming five years.
The project — a money management initiative launched in 2016 to accelerate progress toward an inclusive culture — set new targets focusing on three aspects of diversity: ethnic minorities, gender and socioeconomic backgrounds. The aim is to increase representation and participation at all levels of seniority within money management.
The ethnicity target is to achieve a 90% ethnicity disclosure rate within the next two years. The project will launch its new "90%" campaign soon, a news release said.
On gender, the Diversity Project set out a number of targets: to achieve 20% female fund managers at firms, up from 14% in large managers and 10% in small companies; for gender pay gaps to be reduced by one-third from their 2019 figures; and for the recruitment of equal numbers of male and female graduates and those leaving high school.
The project's socioeconomic targets will aim for all member firms to collect data for their staffs and to track promotions; for all member firms to support one or more university or high school graduate recruitment programs focused on socioeconomic diversity; and for at least 80% of interns and graduates to have attended a publicly supported school — known in the U.K. as a state school — for the duration of their education from age 11 to 16.
The new targets come as the coronavirus pandemic has shaken up mindsets and working practices, and has disrupted practices and behaviors that may otherwise have been hard to change, the release said.
"It's not the way we wanted to catalyze a step-change, but we are seizing the moment to refocus our efforts to accelerate progress towards a more inclusive culture and greater diversity of talent," Helena Morrissey, chairwoman of the project, said in the release.
