Getting women into fund manager roles is just one front of the battle to achieve gender balance in asset management. Female managers still manage significantly less money, proportionately, than their male colleagues.

At Amundi, however, women’s portfolios are almost as large as men’s.

The asset manager won the Citywire Gender Diversity Award for the best AUM split between male and female fund managers. (Data is taken from Citywire’s 2021 Alpha Female report. Click here to register your interest in our 2022 edition.)

At the 19 groups that employ 100 or more managers, the average male-run portfolio size was £1bn, while for female-run portfolios it stood at £481m: a 72% difference. The gap reaches £3bn or 121% at Fidelity Investments, where the average portfolio sizes were £4bn for men and £973m for women.

Amundi is doing better than most in the 100+ managers category. The average portfolio size for women at the French giant was £350.9m, while for men it stood at £398.4m: a £47.5m or 13% difference. This makes it the firm with the smallest gender gap in the 100+ category.

However, Citywire Alpha Female data reveals there are, in fact, asset managers where women manage more money than men. The highest in the 100+ managers category is Nordea, where the average portfolio size for women is £1.3bn versus £630m for men: a £750m or 106% difference.

Citywire’s award favours firms with the smallest gap between male and female manager AUMs, meaning Amundi triumphed over Nordea last year.

Despite this, according to the Citywire database, out of 269 fund managers at Amundi, in 2021 only 32 (12%) were women. This is three percentage points lower than the global average for the 100+ managers category. But the number of mixed teams is 1.5 points above average, putting the group in the top half of the 19-strong category.

Women at the helm

Amundi’s efforts to reach gender balance extend beyond fund management.

The group has almost tripled the number of women in executive committees over the past six years, going from 10% in 2015 to 29.6% in 2021 and is not planning to stop: it aims to have 35% of women in governing bodies by 2025. According to Amundi, women in senior executive positions reached 34.5% in 2021.

Companies often bemoan the lack of female candidates. But to borrow a phrase possibly coined in a Harvard Business Review article: if you don’t catch a fish, you don’t blame the fish.

Amundi wants more women to apply to portfolio management roles, both internally and externally. This was the message given to Citywire by its deputy CIO, Vincent Mortier, last year.

But intake is nothing without retention, which is why internal candidates are so important.

As the table below shows, Amundi has room for improvement. Career longevity and high turnover rates for its female managers are more pronounced than some of its peers in the 100+ category.

Amplify has so far revealed the mixed-team make-up of two of the biggest managers with 100+ fund managers as shown in Citywire’s 2021 Alpha Female report. Click here to read the 2021 Alpha Female report.