Since Citywire launched the Alpha Female Report six years ago, the proportion of female managers in Citywire’s database has only increased from 10.3% in 2016 to 12% in 2022.

Nisha Long, head of ESG and cross-border research at Citywire, described this pace of change as ‘appallingly slow’, and a reason to ‘legitimately question’ whether anything has changed at all.

Over these seven years, the asset management industry has made statements, formed coalitions and implemented diversity strategies to address its lack of women.

But when analysing the diversity strategies of 15 of the largest asset managers in Europe, Citywire Selector found that targets aimed at increasing the number of female fund managers remain scarce.

Amundi, BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, Schroders, Fidelity International, Janus Henderson, M&G, Man Group, BNP Paribas Asset Management, UBS Asset Management, LGIM, DWS, Axa Investment Managers and Allianz Global Investors all have KPIs in place to improve the representation of women at senior management level.

However, none of them currently have similar targets for representation at a fund management level.

This is despite the fact that the average share of women in senior leadership roles in finance – 33% as of 2021, according to the Women in Finance Charter – is nearly three times higher than the overall percentage of female fund managers.

Senior focus

Key performance indicators (KPIs) for improving gender diversity in the asset management industry have become increasingly common in the seven years since the Alpha Female report was first launched, most notably through the UK government-sponsored Women in Finance Charter.

More than 400 firms have signed up to the charter since its inception in March 2016, pledging to set targets for gender diversity in senior management and annually publish their progress on their website.

Fourteen of the 15 firms analysed by Citywire Selector currently have such targets available on their website.

The outlier is Baillie Gifford, which is not a signatory of the UK Women in Finance Charter, and whose website mentions ‘broad commitments’ to diversity and inclusion, such as ‘fostering an inclusive and welcoming culture’.

Most of the asset managers included in the analysis have targets in the 30-40% range. For Schroders, it’s 35% by 2023, while BlackRock aims for 32.5% by 2024, and Amundi is targetting 35% by 2025.

However, women already occupy more than 30% of senior management positions at Schroders, BlackRock and Amundi.

This is while women make up less than 15% of these firms’ fund management departments, according to the Citywire 2021 Alpha Female report, and the numbers have not improved significantly in 2022. The same can be seen across other firms.

‘One woman could change the percentage quite dramatically’

Companies including UBS AM, AllianzGI and Axa IM said it is important to focus on improving visible diversity at senior ranks, but Helena Morrissey, chair of the Diversity Project and founder of the 30% Club, highlighted that representation at a senior level can be misleading.

‘There’s like 11-12 people at the management board level, so one woman could change the percentage quite drastically,’ she said.

Morrissey added that targets aimed at improving female representation at the workforce level, which have been implemented at AllianzGI, Fidelity International, BNP Paribas AM and LGIM, don’t necessarily tackle the areas most in need of improvement.

‘I’m not so impressed by that one. That one is kind of easy,’ she said. ‘The problem isn’t that we don’t have 45% women in the workforce – it’s that they often tend to be in support functions such as assistants, in the back office, human resources or communications.

‘It’s not that that’s not important. But obviously, we don’t want to think that we’ve got a lovely gender balance when really, we just have women in support roles and men actually calling the big investment shots.’

A lack of targets

Despite there being fewer women in fund management than at senior levels, there are currently no industry initiatives similar to the Women in Finance Charter aimed at addressing the issue.

The Diversity Project set a target in 2020 of 30% female fund managers by 2030, but its members are under no obligation to commit to it – and in the two years since, few seem to have adopted the concept.

Out of the 15 asset management firms included in Citywire Selector’s analysis, only one – Franklin Templeton – said it plans to introduce targets aimed at increasing the percentage of female fund managers.

The firm, which failed to meet its Women in Finance Charter target for 2022, is currently in the process of renewing enterprise-wide goals for female representation globally by October 2022.

UBS AM, Schroders and AllianzGI told Citywire Selector, that while such targets are not part of their official diversity strategies, targets are set at a functional level at the discretion of individual managers and not made public.

‘We track the percentage of female fund managers, but do not have specific targets for this type of role as we look at the broader investment population,’ said a BNP Paribas AM spokesperson.

The firm has set a target to ensure that 40% of new hires across the investment business in 2022 are women.

None of the other firms contacted by Citywire Selector provided a direct answer as to why gender diversity KPIs at fund management level are not included in their diversity strategies.

Programmes and pipelines

Many said that the percentage of female fund managers is tracked internally, and there are initiatives and programmes in place to improve female representation.

‘The targets we have agreed at senior management level are something that we are striving towards for all levels of seniority and experience,’ said a Fidelity International spokesperson.

‘We do not have a specific target for female fund managers. However, we have made significant progress in the past few years with female fund managers being promoted to senior roles,’ said an Axa IM spokesperson.

According to Morrissey, programmes and initiatives do not sufficiently address the lack of women in fund management – to do this, she said, you need targets.

‘People have gotten a bit worn down by initiatives that haven’t worked. I think they now realise that you’ve got to approach these things like any other business issue.

‘You don’t run a business saying: “Hopefully, we’ll make more money this year or hire a few more people”. You actually set out a plan and you have objectives, and then you measure how you’re doing against them.

‘I don’t think gender balance has been approached that way. But people now see that they probably need to do that. I think the industry needs to be harsher with ourselves and say that actually, it’s good to have actions, but you need results.’

Additionally, Citywire’s Nisha Long said pipelines and initiatives have been implemented long enough for the intake to be feeding through, yet the Alpha Female report suggests they haven’t been effective.

‘When I started working on the Alpha Female report, the onus was on creating a pipeline of female talent. Huge steps were being taken to have gender parity at entry level, and this has largely happened.

‘The figures suggest that the pipeline is somehow being choked off. This talent doesn’t seem to make it past analyst positions,’ she said.

Citywire Selector analysis

KPIs to improve female representation in industries can be controversial, as they can be regarded as tokenism.

But this industry isn’t necessarily adverse to such targets – many companies have already implemented them at senior management level via the UK Women in Finance Charter, and some have applied them to their workforce, too.

So, what’s so different about fund management?

Considering we have known for years that female representation is particularly low in fund management – much lower than in senior management or in the wider workforce – why isn’t this area being targeted with similar KPIs?

One factor could be that it’s simply too difficult to make such public pledges, given the lack of women across the fund management pipeline; having informal targets at a functional level offers fund managers the opportunity to set ambitions, without having to deal with the public blowback in case they fail to meet them.

It should also be said that a lack of such public KPIs doesn’t necessarily reflect an unwillingness to adopt them.

Morrissey noted when the Diversity Project was discussing the idea of introducing gender diversity targets for fund management, the only pushback she got was firms asking whether the targets were ambitious enough.

‘That was interesting. People recognise the problem. Although members don’t have to individually sign up to the exact same targets – some have,’ said Morrissey.

The UK Women in Finance Charter and LGIM did not respond to Citywire Selector’s requests for comment at the time of publication. Baillie Gifford and Janus Henderson declined to comment.