An institutional consultants organization focused on increasing transparency around diversity in money management is endorsing an updated version of ILPA's Diversity Metrics Template.
Institutional Limited Partners Association, Washington, unveiled a revised version of its Diversity Metrics Template in November to reflect market changes. The template was first released in 2018 to standardize diversity, equity and inclusion information received by asset owners during manager due diligence.
The Institutional Investing Diversity Cooperative, an investment consultants association, waited for the ILPA to finalize the updated Diversity Metrics Template before reviewing it and deciding whether to endorse it, said Shelly Heier, president of consulting firm Verus Advisory Inc. and founder of the IIDC.
The IIDC has 26 institutional investment consulting firms as members representing $43.4 trillion in assets under advisement. The organization's goal is to advocate for access to data capturing every aspect of diversity. The IIDC has been working with eVestment LLC since 2021 to gather diversity data from traditional managers, resulting in 609 equity and fixed-income managers providing diversity data on about 6,200 investment strategies.
The IIDC is now also focusing on gathering the same data from alternative investment managers.
The IIDC decided to endorse the use of the ILPA Diversity Metrics Template because it aligns with its own efforts, Ms. Heier said.
"It uses the same matrix for gender/ethnicity that the IIDC created with eVestment for traditional managers, which was an important factor in our decision to endorse it," Ms. Heier said.
IIDC's members are currently incorporating ILPA's template into their due diligence processes and encouraging their clients to do the same.
The updated ILPA template includes a single set of globally relevant designations for race and ethnicity, a non-binary option on gender, additional self-identified diversity aspects such as LGBTQ+ and select portfolio company-level data.
