The FSC was proud to launch the FSC Women in Investment Management Charter (WIM Charter) at a recent joint event with Mercer, which delivered solutions to improve gender diversity in investment management.
As part of the WIM Charter launch, we surveyed our domestic and global fund manager members on gender diversity in their investment teams, focusing on roles which are actively involved in an investment function or that have an investment execution role, such as portfolio managers, investment research roles or traders, for example. Various research findings have shown that women are commonly underrepresented in these roles.
Our survey showed that women on average make up 25 per cent of investment teams which is a considerable improvement on the findings of a 2017 Frontier Advisors survey which found that women made up just 14 per cent of Australia equity management teams. While this is an improvement, there is more to do to achieve greater gender balance in investment management teams.
The WIM Charter introduces accountability and transparency mechanisms to enable organisations to achieve their desired, self-nominated, gender diversity target within their investment management teams. By signing the WIM Charter firms can adopt these four principles:
- appointing a senior executive from the investment management team who is responsible and accountable for gender diversity within the investment management team;
- setting internal targets for gender diversity in investment management division;
- monitoring and reporting annually on progress against targets; and
- demonstrating an intention to link the pay of staff to delivery against the gender diversity target.
The framework for the WIM Charter is based on HM Treasury Women in Finance Charter (UK Charter), a pledge aimed at improving the gender balance across financial services in the United Kingdom. While the focus for the UK Charter is broader and is aimed at increasing gender balance in senior management, the WIM Charter is focused specifically on gender balance in investment management teams.
Eight FSC WIM Charter Signatories
We are pleased to have eight members collectively managing more than $600 billion in assets under management sign this voluntary initiative to date:
- AllianceBernstein Australia Limited;
- Australian Ethical Investment Ltd;
- Challenger Limited;
- First Sentier Investors;
- Mercer;
- QIC Limited;
- Russell Investment Group; and
- State Street Global Advisors Australia Limited.
The launch of the WIM Charter builds on the FSC Guidance Note 38 – Improving Gender Balance in Investment Management Teams (GN38) and the gender diversity resource library which have been developed with fund manager members. These great initiatives are all aimed at providing members with practical tools and guidance and reflect the commitment of the industry to support greater gender balance. See more here.
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