37
Treasury Committee
Oral evidence: Sexism in the City, HC 240
Wednesday 15 November 2023
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 15 November 2023.
Members present: Harriett Baldwin (Chair); Mr John Baron; Dame Angela Eagle; Drew Hendry; Anne Marie Morris.
Women and Equalities Committee member present: Caroline Nokes (Chair).
Questions 39 - 130
Witnesses
I: Sarah Boon, Managing Director, UK Finance; Yvonne Braun, Director, Association of British Insurers (ABI); Adam Jacobs-Dean, Managing Director, The Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA); Karen Northey, Director, The Investment Association.
Examination of witnesses
Witnesses: Sarah Boon, Yvonne Braun, Adam Jacobs-Dean and Karen Northey.
Q39 Chair: Welcome to this afternoon’s Treasury Committee evidence session in our inquiry into sexism in the City. I would like to welcome my colleague Caroline Nokes, who chairs the Women and Equalities Committee. She is joining us as a guest for this important inquiry. Can I start by inviting our witnesses to introduce themselves?
Sarah Boon: I am Sarah Boon. I am the managing director of corporate affairs and strategic policy at UK Finance. UK Finance is the trade association that covers banking, payment providers and finance firms. Earlier in my career I was at the FCA and the Bank of England, so I have seen this from both sides of the aisle.
Karen Northey: Good afternoon. I am Karen Northey. I am the executive committee member responsible for corporate affairs at the Investment Association. The Investment Association represents UK-based investment managers. We have about 250 member firms managing about £8.8 trillion of assets from the UK.
Yvonne Braun: Hello. I am Yvonne Braun. I am director of policy for long-term savings, health and protection at the Association of British Insurers. More relevant to this Committee, I am the executive sponsor for diversity, equity and inclusion. The ABI represents the insurance and long-term savings industry.
Adam Jacobs-Dean: My name is Adam Jacobs-Dean. I am a managing director at the Alternative Investment Management Association, AIMA. We are a global trade association representing the hedge fund industry. I oversee our work on diversity, equity and inclusion, which I will refer to as DEI today.
Q40 Chair: Thank you so much. I want to start by explaining that the reason that our Committee and the Women and Equalities Committee are looking into this issue again is that we published on it back in 2018 and we want to see what change has happened in the last five years. The view of this Committee is that the financial services sector is one of the jewels in the crown of the UK economy. It is a significant area of comparative advantage for the UK as a global financial centre. We would hope that it is therefore able to attract the best people and give them rewarding and potentially very highly paid careers and job opportunities. The taxes from the industry pay for a significant part of our public services.
Strategically, it is an important area. We would hope that we are making sure the very best people can thrive in the industry. We have been quite surprised by the evidence we have received in our inquiry. Again, as I stress, the inquiry is focused on change since 2018. There has been an almost unanimous point of view that, really, nothing has changed since 2018—things have flatlined. This is still an industry where it can be a struggle for women, in particular, to progress to the highest echelons. It is an area where there continues to be a very wide gender pay gap. It continues to be an industry where we hear concerning stories about culture. We have taken some first-hand evidence from people in the industry on that. Is that something you recognise in the segment of the financial services industry you are here to represent today?
Sarah Boon: There is definitely still more that the industry needs to do, but, from my personal experience, things have changed. It is not fair to say that nothing has changed since 2018.
Q41 Chair: What has changed, then? Can you quantify it?
Sarah Boon: For me, one of the key things that has changed is, first, the greater focus on flexible working. The pandemic has absolutely brought that to the forefront of people’s minds. If I look back to 2018, I would never have interviewed someone for a position and been asked, “What is your flexible working policy?” It just was not something that was discussed. That is something that people, particularly women, have really benefited from.
The other thing I would point to is that there is much greater understanding, transparency and discussion about the issues that affect women. For example, the brilliant report that was done by the Financial Services Skills Commission on the menopause in financial services really did create a conversation in financial services. It is something that is discussed more. There is definitely more that can be done, but there has been change.
Karen Northey: I would agree. There is definitely still a way to go and there are definitely improvements that can be made. One of the things I particularly wanted to flag today was that, in incredible timing, tomorrow morning we are releasing our first ever industry-wide detailed data report on diversity, equity and inclusion across the investment management industry. One of the things we recognise is that it is quite difficult to measure progress. Do we have enough data? Do we have an industry-wide view of what is happening across investment management in particular?
I will speak to some of the details of that today and share the full report with everyone tomorrow morning. We have seen some areas of improvement. We have been able to look, for example, at change in the pay gap. We have seen perhaps not as much progress as we would like to see, but there have been changes in that.
Q42 Chair: Can you outline those changes for us, please?
Karen Northey: Sure, I can give you the data. If I look at pay gap progress between 2018 and 2022, the mean on pay has changed from 31% to 24%. There is a smaller pay gap there. The median has changed from 31% to 25%. On bonuses, again, we have seen a change in the mean from 65% to 57% and a change in the median from 55% to 46%. We have seen some progress on the pay gap in that four-year period.
Q43 Chair: What does 46% mean, for the general public?
Karen Northey: That is the percentage pay gap.
Q44 Chair: Does that mean that for every pound a man is paid a woman is paid 46% less? Just help me out with what that statistic is telling us.
Karen Northey: There is an overall pay gap. If you look at the median of what is paid and bonuses between males and females, there is a difference. There is a median—
Q45 Chair: Women are paid 46% less.
Karen Northey: There is a gap of 46%.
Chair: That is the big improvement.
Karen Northey: It has dropped. As I said, it is by no means enough of an improvement. It has gone from 55% to 46%, so at least it is going in the right direction. That is for bonuses.
Q46 Chair: I think we are all taking a sharp breath at the width of that, because it is a shockingly wide statistic. Thinking about the investment management industry, we received evidence in our last session that 12% of investment managers are women. Do you recognise that figure?
Karen Northey: In terms of portfolio managers, yes.
Chair: Yes, people managing money.
Karen Northey: Yes. We have seen a real problem, particularly at senior levels. If we look at it in stages, there is getting people into the industry and then there is retaining them and promoting them from within. Where we are seeing a significant gap is that middle piece.
If we look at recruiting, for example, we have taken steps—this is the other area I would flag—through a programme we have called Investment20/20. We are trying to change the make-up of the people coming into our industry. That needed to change so it is more reflective of a wider range of society. Gender is part of that, but it is not the only part of it. That is about bringing them in. We were finding that our recruitment was not bad, relatively speaking, but then we were losing a greater percentage of those candidates from a diverse background.
The idea behind Investment20/20 in terms of early stage is to open it up to a wider range and then to provide support across the industry—this is industry-run—to bring together the cohort coming through Investment20/20 and to make sure they have a peer support group. It can be difficult if there is one person like you in an industry. It is not much fun to be there. There is not that culture. It is about improving that culture. The problem is that that starts at the bottom, and it is taking time.
Q47 Chair: It started in 2020, I assume.
Karen Northey: No, it started 10 years ago. Investment20/20 launched 10 years ago. We have put 2,500 through the programme.
Chair: Was it meant to be fixed by 2020, then?
Karen Northey: No.
Q48 Chair: Why is it called Investment20/20?
Karen Northey: Perfect vision is 20/20.
Q49 Chair: We will get to some of the steps people have taken. I am trying to hear from you where things have improved. I am slightly struggling at the moment. Yvonne, where have things improved since 2018?
Yvonne Braun: To be clear, I would not suggest that it is all fixed—far from it—but, if you look at the numbers, we have been collecting DEI data from our members since 2017. The representation of women on boards has increased in that time from 19% in 2017, which is not great, to—
Q50 Chair: Is this in the insurance industry?
Yvonne Braun: This is insurance and long-term savings, so also the pension providers in the UK. Female representation on boards has increased from 19% in 2017 to 32% in 2022.
As we all know, board positions are very often non-executive directors. If you look at the executive teams, which is a better indicator, that has gone up from 22% in 2017 to 29%. At entry level, it is 58% women. Even if you have 29% in the executive team, that is still pretty poor. Nevertheless, it is a shift.
We are also at a point where 69% of companies have set representation targets for women at executive team level. Any gender pay gap is pretty much unacceptable. It was at 29% in 2018. It is at 23% now. That is still way too much, without a doubt, but that is where we are.
To talk briefly about the practical steps we have taken since we started working seriously in this whole area, we published a report back in 2018 on the gender seniority gap, which revealed, unsurprisingly, that career progression for women often ends when they have children. They return, go part-time and career progression stalls from there or even goes down.
To do something about that, we launched two initiatives. One was about the transparency of parental leave and pay. That was in 2019. Sunlight is always the best disinfectant. If you want to work at a company, you know what you are letting yourself in for in terms of what those policies are.
Q51 Chair: You do not have to ask for it. You get told this information.
Yvonne Braun: Yes, exactly. It is basically on the public website. It works. It has driven up standards. If it is public, there is a bit more competition for it for good standards in that area. That is supported by 33 members.
In 2021 we launched the Making Flexible Work Charter, which is about firms committing to making the majority of their roles available for flexible working, including job sharing. Again, this included firms publishing their policies around that and, very importantly, putting processes in place to make this a reality.
A lot of this space is about the actual things you do on the ground, day to day—your recruitment practices, the criteria you use for promotion, the criteria you use for bonuses and so on and so forth. That is the practical work, which is very important.
Then I will just briefly draw out—maybe we can talk about this a little bit later—our DEI blueprint, which we published last year. That is really a work programme for the ABI and our sector from 2023 to 2026 and beyond. It basically sets out what we do in three areas: attract, grow and advance.
“Attract”, as you might imagine, is about how we attract a diverse set of candidates to the sector and how we make our recruitment practices inclusive. “Grow” is about how we develop these people, how we make sure they stay and how we make sure that, if there are things that are happening in their lives, their career can still continue. “Advance” is about having the data and identifying what more we need to do.
That was developed with a sub-group of our board, which is our DEI sub-group. They worked with us on it. We launched it, and 21 members have endorsed that as the work programme they want to work with.
Q52 Chair: Twenty-one members have endorsed it out of how many?
Yvonne Braun: We have 120 groups and 200 members altogether, so we still have quite a lot to go. What I would say is it is all the very biggest firms. If you think about it as a proportion of the 320,000-strong workforce in insurance and long-term savings, it will cover an awful lot of people.
Q53 Chair: Adam, how have things improved in your industry since 2018?
Adam Jacobs-Dean: Similarly, in our industry the data suggest we are seeing more women come into the workforce in hedge funds. The share of women working in hedge funds in 2019 was 19%. That figure has gone to just under 27% in 2023. We are seeing an increase in the number of women working in our industry overall, which is heartening.
We know the picture at senior level is not as good, and that is where the focus needs to be.
Q54 Chair: It is not as good as 27%.
Adam Jacobs-Dean: No, it would be more like 20% women in senior roles. There is still clearly work to be done on that front. I have seen a huge amount of work being done by the industry. Firms have been supporting AIMA through our working groups and committees to produce guidance for firms around diversity, equity and inclusion.
In 2019 we published an industry guide. It has very concrete steps that firms can consider taking when it comes to DEI. There is a menu of 45 different recommendations. We followed that with discrete guides on further topics, like how to do a DEI policy and how to promote the concept of allyship internally.
We have done a lot as an industry in terms of sharing insight and building resources. We have also focused very heavily on how to empower investors to provide more challenge to fund managers and to make sure they are asking discerning questions about what fund managers are doing.
We see that investor channel as crucial. If you look at the investor base of the hedge fund industry, it is overwhelmingly institutional. The largest pot of money managed by hedge funds is pension fund money. That constitutes about 50% of the assets under management in the industry.
In 2020, we published a questionnaire that covers all aspects of diversity, equity and inclusion. It asks for details of the headcount in different types of roles done by men and women; it asks for data on ethnicity and disability. This is something investors can use to scrutinise what their fund managers are doing. That has been very widely used across the industry.
We have also focused on trying to bring better visibility to the range of people who work in our industry. We know that men are in the majority, but, as an industry body, we are well placed to showcase the success that a number of women have had in terms of forging careers in our industry.
We do that through various events and programmes. In the last year, we had close to 30 events that focused on DEI or aspects of it. We have had a similar number this year. We place a real emphasis on that as well so we can achieve against the “seeing is believing” test because that is important.
Finally, we focus very much on the pipeline of people entering the industry. Particularly in the context of women working in fund management and investment decision-making roles, we will not be able to fix that unless we have more women studying STEM subjects at university and pursuing quantitative degrees, which are ultimately the ones that are most likely to lead to the highest-paid roles in our industry.
Q55 Chair: Would any of your members be regulated firms that would be covered by the FCA and PRA consultation on the proposals for a new regulatory framework on diversity and inclusion?
Adam Jacobs-Dean: Yes. Out of our 2,200 members globally, about 270 are UK-based fund managers that would be subject to the FCA rules.
Q56 Chair: How have they reacted to the proposals?
Adam Jacobs-Dean: People really embrace the fact that the regulator is now focusing much more on non-financial misconduct right across the process for approving firms and individuals. That is absolutely crucial and a very welcome development as far as we are concerned.
There is more to be done in terms of articulating what that means in practice. It is not helpful to leave it entirely to firms to try to navigate something that is not necessarily always clear-cut.
Q57 Chair: You are going to put in a reply to the consultation.
Adam Jacobs-Dean: We will indeed. That is one observation we will make: we welcome the focus on non-financial misconduct. Clarity on the FCA’s expectations will be helpful in terms of making that work in practice.
The fact that the FCA differentiates between firm sizes in its expectations is also helpful because the reality is that the typical hedge fund manager is a relatively small firm. The average headcount in the UK is under 20 people in a hedge fund manager. What works in the context of a firm that employs many thousands of people will be quite different to what you would expect to see in terms of DEI in a smaller firm.
Q58 Chair: Just very quickly, I will ask the same question to the other three industry representatives. Are you going to reply to the consultation on the new regulatory proposals? What are your general top lines on that?
Yvonne Braun: Yes, absolutely. We are still working that through with members, but we welcome the focus from regulators on it because we think this is an incredibly important area. Ultimately, there is probably still quite a bit of inertia in financial services more generally. It is good to have the focus from the regulator to shift that.
Q59 Chair: How do investment managers feel about it?
Karen Northey: Not unlike in other areas, the aim is supported. They support what the FCA is trying to achieve, and we are going to respond. We are talking with our members. There is definitely support for the direction of travel.
We hope to be able to do a deep dive into the specifics. We have not been able to do that. This is not about the general principles but how you collect data and what data you collect. Hopefully, we can work collaboratively with the FCA to feed in some of the standard practices. Again, using the data we have managed to collect already, hopefully we will be able to provide some insights as part of the FCA’s work on this. Yes, we are very supportive.
Chair: Sarah, you are formerly of the FCA.
Karen Northey: Me too, actually.
Sarah Boon: Generally, our members are very supportive of any initiatives that improve diversity and inclusion. We have had a fantastic response from our members in terms of really wanting to be involved in crafting our response to the FCA. We have spoken to over 150 of our just over 300 members. We have run over 10 workshops for people at different levels in their organisations.
The FCA consultation, in particular, is quite granular. We are not at a stage where we are ready to submit a consultation response, but I can give you a couple of the emerging themes, if that would be helpful.
First—this goes back to the question you asked Adam—we really feel that any regulation needs to be proportionate. We need to understand how it is going to impact smaller members. Our members range from very large to very small. There is definitely greater clarity that is needed in a couple of areas in the consultation. Specifically, there definitely needs to be greater clarity about where the dividing line is between people’s private lives and their working lives. That is something that is currently slightly unclear.
On the data piece, there is definitely a recognition within the regulator—it is something we will be discussing with them—that the data requirements will need really sensitive positioning within all of our members so that people respond appropriately.
One of the things that has been pulled out by the consultation is that in colleague surveys “do not know” responses could be an indication of bad culture. That is not necessarily the case from the members we have spoken to. That is another thing we are discussing with the FCA. Broadly, it is a very supportive response.
Q60 Chair: Are any of you getting pushback that this is not the regulator’s business or that this is regulatory over-creep? You are not getting that from anyone. None of your members has said anything along those lines.
Karen Northey: No, absolutely not. There may be areas where we disagree with the specifics but not in terms of the direction of travel and the role of the regulator in promoting diversity and inclusion.
Sarah Boon: I have not heard that from my members. The only thing I would add is that, as an ex-regulator, the thing everybody agrees on is the policy intent. One of the things that will be really crucial is how it is supervised in practice. Supervisors should be given adequate training in what they should be looking at, and that should be done on a consistent basis. That supervision piece is really important.
Q61 Anne Marie Morris: As regulators, it seems to me that there is the potential for some conflict. You have to represent your members—they want successful and financially viable businesses—and then you are encouraging this diversity and equality agenda. Although, Karen, you say you have not been getting pushback, none the less it seems to me that their objectives and your objectives are not always going to be aligned. How do you deal with that?
In terms of the toolkit you have, I guess you could say, “You cannot be a member unless you do X, Y and Recognise,” or you could name and shame and provide some visibility. So far, I have not heard anything about trying to demonstrate the real pluses of doing this in terms of productivity to the business. There has been some research historically, but I am not sure there is much recently.
The real concern for me is, however many initiatives you might put out, you cannot make them take part unless it is a requirement of membership and so on, or part of regulation. You also cannot make sure the people who take part in your workshops embrace this and then go out and deliver that change.
What do you see as the way forward for you as trade bodies? What are the tools you use? What tools would you like to be able to use to drive real behaviour change rather than what some people have described as window-dressing initiatives that do not actually deliver that change?
Sarah Boon: You are absolutely right. As a trade association, it is not our role to tell members how to run their businesses. The levers you would be looking for in terms of getting that change would be regulatory or legal.
One thing we do is try to share best practice between members. Some members see this kind of differentiation as a recruitment tool. I have loads of fantastic examples, as you would expect, of great initiatives that members are doing. Our role as a trade association is to represent members in terms of policy and legislative change rather than to change the way they behave.
Q62 Anne Marie Morris: That is interesting. It is a lot about stick and not a lot about carrot, and yet, in terms of culture change, the evidence seems to be that you need some carrot because the stick on its own will not work. I am curious: have you not thought about anything around trying to demonstrate that it is not only the right thing to do—clearly it is—but that there is also a business benefit? Is there nothing your trade body is doing to collect data to demonstrate the real win for business if they get this right?
Sarah Boon: The data we collect is not in this space. Instead, we bring people together to collaborate so they can hear from their peers where it is benefiting business.
One initiative we started—I think it was this year; it may have been last year—is our Women in Sanctions forum. We brought together not just women in financial services but women in oil and gas and Government to share how they were implementing sanctions. That is also a space where they can discuss how things work better in their organisations or not. We feel our strength is really in that bringing together of people so they can share their experiences.
Q63 Anne Marie Morris: You have sanctions for the ones that misbehave. Do you have gold stars for the ones that do a brilliant job?
Sarah Boon: I mean sanctions in the sense of global sanctions post Ukraine as opposed to sanctions in terms of enforcement activity against them.
Karen Northey: I will pick up a couple of points. First, are we at odds with the FCA as an industry in terms of what we want to achieve? I would say no. I have been on both sides of the fence as well, having spent quite a long time at the FCA. Where differences often pop up is how you achieve it and whether or not you have the same views of the best way to get somewhere. That is where the conflict arises time and time again; it is not necessarily with the objectives.
In our industry in particular, if you take the role of investment managers as stewards, you do not need to convince investment managers that diversity and inclusion is a good thing or that a broad range of views are a good thing. At a high level, it is embraced and expected. We expect that of our investee companies. They are holding to account investee companies and using the various initiatives such as Women on Boards.
The IA plays a role in that through something we call IVIS, which is an information service where, in AGM season, we review publicly listed companies and provide colour tops or types of ratings around exactly those criteria. Are they meeting the diversity and inclusion targets that have been set out? Each year we publish on that. As an investor, a company that is diverse is viewed as better. It offers better long-term value.
At a high level, we do not have to try to bring our members with us and say, “These are good things,” or, “A diverse industry is a good thing.” That is not something we have to do. The industry is there. Lots of people view this as a good thing, but how do you make it happen in practice? That has proved much trickier.
I have had lots of conversations over my time in the City, in the legal community and in fact outside financial services. There are lots of ideas and there is lots of good will, but what are those practical things you can do to change the dial? We are seeing very slow progress over the years, as we have just talked about.
On a practical level, the Investment Association is not an enforcement body. We cannot be. We are a member-led organisation. We are made up of our members. Likewise, we have a culture framework. We produce lots of information on this. Culture is one of the biggest problems in terms of making progress. Is the culture right? If you can get the culture in an organisation right, you are much more likely to retain top talent of all types and you are much more likely to be making decisions on the right criteria.
We provide guidance on that. What does a good culture look like? How do you achieve it? What are some of the steps you can work through? We work with our members to implement when there are legal requirements. As you know, whether it is primary legislation or even FCA rules, it is difficult to know what some rules mean in practice. Collectively, we share best practice. We come together and we share that with our members.
Finally, one of the purposes of the data survey we have just released is to demonstrate some of these things. What is the link between culture, how positive people feel at work and the steps you are taking on diversity and inclusion?
Do we have enough data? We are an industry that likes its data. We need to be able to demonstrate that. This is very much a first step. We have gone across the industry. We have 75% of all employers in investment management and 75% of assets under management. For the first time, we have a really comprehensive view across a range of diversity and inclusion metrics in terms of how they tackle diversity and inclusion internally and what some of the metrics are.
Yes, we are doing a lot of that positive work because we are not an organisation that can discipline our members, and it is not our role to, but we have to provide that carrot, not the stick, to bring our members with us on the specifics and to give them ideas. As I said, most firms buy in to the concept from the outset. It is making it happen in practice that is proving really difficult.
Yvonne Braun: You are asking about whether we collect data to persuade our members that it is a good thing to do. The case is made. There is a lot of McKinsey research, of which you will be well aware. Most recently—I think it was last week—BlackRock published quite a big report looking at 1,200 companies, showing that, beyond any doubt, gender-balanced companies outperformed those that were not. The case is clear.
Q64 Anne Marie Morris: Can I interrupt you briefly? The case can be clear and intellectually understood, but it is about getting it into people’s heads to make them say, “Therefore, this is what I need to do, because it is in the company’s best interest.” I am not sure the case is made for that kind of implementation, going back to what Karen said.
Yvonne Braun: Yes, you are absolutely right. The case is also about the fact that, if you want to be competitive and have really good talent, you need to change the way you are. You need to change the way you include people; you need to change the way you recruit. You are going to get much better results.
Fundamentally, the real case for DEI in the sector is about what the sector will deliver to real customers. This is the mission statement of our DEI blueprint. We are not there yet, absolutely not, but we want our sector to be the most diverse, inclusive and equitable in the UK economy. We want our 320,000 people to represent the companies they come from.
We also know why that is. Ultimately, it is very much in companies’ enlightened self-interest, as I always say, to do this. If we did not have any support, we would not have a sub-group of the ABI board that focuses on DEI. Our members would not have come up with that blueprint. This also reflects the purpose we have as an organisation, which our members have endorsed, which is that we want to drive change to build and protect a thriving society. Part of that is about being invested in people and the planet.
This is of one piece with what we do as a trade body in terms of our purpose. That has been determined by ABI staff together with our members.
Q65 Anne Marie Morris: Adam, I am going to ask you a slightly different question. Your due diligence questionnaire is interesting with regard to diversity and inclusion and so on. This then takes us to the perspective of the investor. It is one thing to look at the members; this is about the investor. How do you motivate investors to take this into account in the way they make their investment decisions and potentially even when they choose to divest? Is it about transparency? Is it about looking at where the different businesses they are thinking about investing in have got to and how that compares to productivity? What is it that your questionnaire has empowered? Where do you want to go from here? What, if anything, could we do more broadly, not just within your organisation?
Adam Jacobs-Dean: In terms of the investor dynamic, as I said earlier, we are talking about an institutional investor base, which is pension funds, charities and endowments. They tend to have quite strong preferences in terms of diversity, equity and inclusion because, ultimately, they want to invest with managers who, to a degree at least, represent society as a whole or the beneficiaries they exist to serve. It is something where investors are very interested in the metrics.
The diversity, equity and inclusion questionnaire that we produce is a mix of questions about headcount numbers and the representation of different types of individuals within the firm, and more policy-based questions about how a firm deals with DEI generally and what policies it has in place for parental leave, for example.
The questionnaire itself is freely available on our website, so anybody can use it if they want to. What is quite important is that it has been adopted by investment consultants, who basically provide a platform for investors to engage with fund managers, and built into the platforms they offer.
We have partnered with Albourne, which is one of these significant investment consultants in this space. It has taken the questionnaire and integrated it into its system. If you are a fund manager on its system, you need to complete it. If you are an investor, you can access the information. That is being used by over 900 fund managers managing over 5,000 funds. We are seeing genuine use of the questionnaire.
It also becomes the basis for comparisons between potential fund managers. If you look at two fund managers with broadly similar investment strategies but see that one outperforms the other in terms of the representation of women, it could well be a guiding factor in terms of your decision making as an investor.
It is a channel that is already being well used. It is an important one for accountability in the fund management industry.
Q66 Drew Hendry: I have been interested by what you have been telling us so far and the comments you have made about not having to sell the benefits and the case already being made. Can I ask each of you what proportion of the firms you represent have a comprehensive company-wide strategy for diversity and inclusion?
Sarah Boon: I do not have that data, I am afraid. We do not collect data on the diversity and inclusion work of our members. Part of the reason for that is that we try not to duplicate the work other organisations do.
The Women in Finance Charter publishes a report every year. That has a fantastic wealth of information. The only data I can give you is from there. In terms of DEI strategies, I have no data. I can write to you on that, but it will be from that report, as opposed to UK Finance data.
Q67 Drew Hendry: You would imagine that would be something you would want to have.
Karen Northey: It is one of the questions in our data survey that is coming out tomorrow. I can preview that again. We know that eight in 10 of the asset managers we surveyed have adopted an EDI strategy. Of those, two thirds have done so in the last three years. It is interesting to see that this is something that has shifted quite recently.
To pick up on some similar things, we know that half of asset management firms have tied diversity objectives to executive remuneration. There are steps like that. Although eight in 10 have a strategy, more than 90% have instituted initiatives.
Again, coming back to my previous point, there are certainly efforts being made. There are some tough questions about whether or not they are working or working as well as we would like, but we are seeing a large majority of our members making an effort at least.
Yvonne Braun: We have been collecting this as part of our DEI data collection. In 2022, 94% of member firms had a diversity and inclusion strategy, which was up from 76% in 2018. You asked whether it is totally comprehensive. We have not audited them but, from what we know from our very largest members in particular, if they put a DEI strategy together, that tends to be a pretty rigorous job, usually.
Adam Jacobs-Dean: For our industry, it would be pretty much universal for firms to have a staff code of conduct. In terms of a focused DEI policy, about three quarters of the members we represent have one or will have one in place within 12 months from now. About 80% of firms have a mandatory training scheme around issues of conduct.
In terms of retention more broadly, we have asked firms what factors they think are most important in terms of retaining the best staff. About 70% mention the flexibility of the working environment, and a similar proportion mentioned parental benefits. Those tend to be the aspects that are emphasised by firms in their retention approach.
Q68 Drew Hendry: Your answers lead me back to Anne Marie’s challenge at the end of her questioning. If you are saying that the case is made, it does not seem to me that there is a comprehensive approach to that across business.
Let me ask you about the difference between smaller and larger enterprises. Is there a difference between the way smaller firms and larger firms tackle diversity and inclusion?
Adam Jacobs-Dean: The differentiation is very important in the context of the sorts of firms we represent. As I said, the average headcount for European hedge fund managers is under 20 members of staff. By and large, we are talking about relatively small companies.
In the context of a small firm, for example, a metrics-based approach might not be particularly meaningful because the number of roles you might be creating in any given year and the degree of turnover could be quite limited.
In that context, contributing to the effort around DEI might look quite different. You might have somebody engaging in an access scheme where you are going to talk to university students about careers in finance to help them understand the pathways that are available to them. You might be contributing to some of our work as AIMA to help develop resources for the industry as a whole.
In that context, it is less likely that you will have all of the schemes you might see in a larger firm. You are unlikely to have, for example, a scheme to help people back into the workplace after having children, because of the scale of your operations, whereas that would be quite common in some of our larger member firms.
We see a real spread. We have tried to acknowledge that in the way we have approached our work by having resources that work for both the larger firms that want to do everything and the smaller firms that can be perhaps more selective about what the right tools are for their business, being mindful of the size of those firms.
Q69 Drew Hendry: Would you all take a similar position?
Karen Northey: We have broken down that data. I mentioned the numbers of firms with an EDI strategy. At least in the information I have here, we have done it by assets under management, which gives you a sense of the size of firm. Again, about 20% of the ones we are talking about have fewer than 50 employees, so they are quite small.
Certainly, every asset manager with more than £50 billion in assets under management that we spoke to had an EDI strategy. If you look at the firms with under £15 billion, the percentage that have a strategy drops to 15%. Again, it has something to do with the formality. If you are a very small organisation with a handful of employees, you are less likely to have a robust 20-page EDI strategy and initiatives. We do definitely see a difference. Unsurprisingly, as you get larger, these things become more formalised and more structured.
Q70 Drew Hendry: Are toolkits available for smaller companies, to give them a 20-page strategy? Are they easily accessible? Are they aware that these things are available?
Karen Northey: Yes. Our membership ranges from the very large companies that everyone will have heard of to quite small niche firms. That information is available to all our members and is shared with all our members. There are opportunities to get that information.
Again, you are not likely to have a full-time diversity and inclusion team if you are a five-person operation, whereas you might if you are a 100,000-person operation. There is a degree that is about how much time you have.
Yvonne Braun: This is where trade bodies can be very useful. As I said, the blueprint we have developed with our members is a toolkit that really lays out a work programme that companies can follow. That is available to all our members, including the smaller ones that, as you were saying, do not tend to necessarily have DEI specialists, for example.
Q71 Drew Hendry: I would like to move on to ask you about business benefit. Do you or indeed any of the firms you represent recognise the potential bottom-line business benefit from diversity and inclusion? You said that you do not have to sell it any more. Do they see it as a bottom-line benefit or does the lack of progress suggest that diversity and inclusion may be a secondary concern?
Karen Northey: I am happy to pick that up. In the role that investment managers have as stewards, they are thinking about the bottom line and the value of their investments, and they are very clear that they expect their investee companies to meet certain obligations on diversity and inclusion and to meet the various targets that have been set.
That is a very clear indication. They are looking for long-term value from their assets. This is something that they are focused on. They have a fiduciary duty to their clients to provide a return on their investment. These are things that they have identified as factors in the value of what they are investing in. That applies equally to their own companies, some of which are listed and therefore have investors themselves.
Yes, they are very clear that it is better for the commercial value of the company if they are delivering on diversity and inclusion. We have seen that in terms of the reports that were mentioned by BlackRock, McKinsey and others.
Q72 Drew Hendry: That is helpful. I asked about the bottom line. I just want to push that a little further. Perhaps others might want to come in on this. Is there a financial value that is added to that?
Karen Northey: That is what I mean in terms of the long-term value of your asset.
Q73 Drew Hendry: Yes, but are companies putting a specific value to that in terms of pounds, shillings and pence? Is it just something in the ether that is of value to the company and they think, “We must do this”? Is there a financial position on it?
Yvonne Braun: The evidence out there already—the McKinsey evidence and the BlackRock evidence—is quite compelling material. Although it may not be possible for any company to say, “If I change the composition of my executive team, it will deliver a certain amount of impact in terms of pounds, shillings and pence,” they would all recognise that it is definitely a benefit.
The one area where that is perhaps most tangible to companies is around the war on talent and competitiveness for the best and brightest. There is a very clear understanding that the best and brightest are not necessarily a particular demographic that all went to particular universities and are all male or whatever. That case is very widely understood.
If you look at some of the initiatives that are out there and that are very well supported, such as 10,000 Black Interns, 10,000 Able Interns and other initiatives like those, there is a clear understanding that, if we diversify our intake—of course, it is not just the intake; it is all the way through—and our talent pipeline, we will ultimately benefit because we are going to have better ideas. If we have better ideas, we are going to be more competitive.
Q74 Drew Hendry: On that, would there be a value in pursuing that further to make it more of an explicit benefit? Would that get more companies to focus on this?
Sarah Boon: I do not know, to be honest. One study that has not been mentioned, which I think you guys are aware of, is from one of our associate members, EY. Its boardroom monitor speaks to investors in companies and boards of companies. That says that 44% of investors have said that gender diversity in the boardroom significantly influences their decision to invest. People definitely pay attention to that data and the other kinds of data we have discussed.
In terms of a pounds figure, I do not know how you would get to that. It is an interesting idea.
Q75 Drew Hendry: I do not know either; that is why I am asking you. A review by the FCA found—I just want to quote this—that some firms “focused almost exclusively on gender representation at senior levels because there are external targets and expectations for it. This suggests that a compliance approach, rather than a genuine commitment to diversity and inclusion, is driving some strategies”. Do the firms that you represent see diversity and inclusion as a compliance exercise rather than a strategic priority?
Karen Northey: Not in my experience, no. The challenge with taking that approach, which is self-evident, is that, if you must comply at a certain level, where does that talent come from? If you do not address the talent pipeline, how will you ever meet the target at that senior level? You will end up with a very small number of potential candidates that everyone is fighting over. Again, it is that war on talent.
If you genuinely want to improve this at senior levels, you have to start by recruiting, retaining and promoting through the entire chain. That only comes from a complete change in culture and the right culture across the entire organisation. It is self-defeating. Where are these female board members going to come from, if they have not been given the opportunity to follow that career path?
Q76 Drew Hendry: Is that the view of your organisations?
Adam Jacobs-Dean: I would entirely endorse that. In a sense, you have not made any progress when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion if one firm simply hires a woman from one of its competitors. Overall, the shape and make-up of the industry has not changed. There needs to be a much more meaningful commitment to change in terms of the sorts of people who are coming into our industry in the first place.
We are focused today on the representation of women, but this also goes more broadly to the point around people from ethnic minority backgrounds and less socioeconomically advantaged backgrounds. We need to broaden the pool of people who might consider a career in the industry.
Sarah Boon: Yes, I would endorse exactly what Adam and Karen have said. We see some great examples of firms using data to try to find some of the issues with progression. It is not just focusing on senior levels but looking much further down.
Monzo, for example, does a data mapping exercise to try to work out where people are getting stuck and where we are not seeing that progression. That requires investment. Yes, that pipeline piece is really important. It is certainly something my members are very focused on.
Q77 Mr Baron: I would like to turn to improving levels of female representation in financial service generally. You will have to forgive me, but I am hearing lots of good initiatives and buzzwords being used. I have heard “presentation targets” and all sorts. The fact is that progress has been painfully slow.
Let me turn to you, Karen, and talk about the investment industry. I worked as a fund manager in years past. Citywire did their “Alpha Female” report, as you well know, only a couple of months ago. It made the point that the percentage of female portfolio managers in the UK now stands at something like 11.8%. Seven years ago, it was 10.1%. On its calculation a couple of years ago, it would take 127 years to reach gender parity. That cannot be good enough, can it?
Karen Northey: No.
Q78 Mr Baron: No, it is not good enough. In the last couple of years, there have been various gender diversity initiatives at asset management firms. I am going to broaden this out to the other sectors as well, but I am focusing on Karen a little bit because fund management has been described as the driver for change or the engine room when it comes to these issues in the City. That is why I am starting there.
Let me suggest a figure from Citywire to you. Of the 1,389 new funds launched in the past two years globally—that is nearly 1,400 funds—just 6.9% were given to female managers. Citywire has had to revise its figures. Two years ago, it suggested that it would take 127 years. It is now going to take 147 years to reach gender parity. It is not good enough by any stretch of the imagination. The pace of improvement in certain respects is going backwards. Why is this? Despite all these wonderful words and initiatives I am hearing, we are making hardly any progress.
Karen Northey: I agree. I wish I could pinpoint one thing that we had to change. In my own vested interest, I would love to change it for my daughter and others. If I had to pick out the overarching driver of what needs to change, it is culture. A lot of that is culture within individual firms. It starts at the beginning of someone’s career. Why are they not moving into those industries?
Adam mentioned schools and training. One of the reasons we launched Investment20/20 was that there is a perception of investment management. We see it time and time again when we go out to schools. We have done hundreds and hundreds of school events. People think, “Investment management is not for me. I did not go to this university. I do not look like this. I do not have family in the City.” There is a real perception problem for people coming into the industry.
Q79 Mr Baron: I am sorry to interrupt; we only have a certain amount of time. If you do not mind me saying, it is up to you to challenge that perception. It is up to you to educate. The asset management industry in this country is one of the wealthiest sectors of the economy. It has the money to do this, and yet I am not seeing much evidence of progress.
From what you are saying, we need to revisit our recruitment policies, do we not? There can be biases within the system. There is frequent travel, long hours and inflexible hours to a certain extent. For women who want children and so on that can be a disadvantage. Maybe the system is not flexible enough and you have not gone far enough in getting that message across to your members.
Karen Northey: I agree. That is one of the things. It is not enough to fix recruitment. It is required but not sufficient, to use an expression. We absolutely need to change recruitment, and that is what we are trying to do. We have had 2,500 people come through Investment20/20, which is looking at recruitment in an entirely different way. In an industry that employs just over 40,000, 2,500 having come through a recruitment programme has changed how we recruit. We recruit based on potential. That is the industry coming together. It is providing support to those people coming through. That is definitely not going far enough, but I am just saying that it is an essential part of it.
Q80 Mr Baron: I am sure it is, Karen. All I would say is that we have been hearing about a lot of these initiatives for a few years now, but the figures on the ground are hardly moving at all. We are hardly moving the dial on this. I would just ask you to revisit this issue—everything from recruitment policies to biases within the system.
To prove I am not just picking on you, Karen, I am just going to spread this out a little bit. The figures I have in front of me are not much better anywhere else. Adam, your figure was 27% or 29%, and then you revised it down to 20%. According to the figures I have in front of me, only around 10% of roles in investment teams or senior management—I am talking about hedge funds here—are held by women. You are worse than the industry generally. Why?
Adam Jacobs-Dean: The data we have seen suggests that the challenge is probably similar across other parts of financial services, including investment banking, in terms of the under-representation of women.
There is a challenge in terms of the sorts of degrees that lead you to a path in fund management in investment teams. They tend to be ones that are quantitative, and they tend to be studied much more by men than women. We know that only about a third of students taking STEM subjects are women. There are specific initiatives across industry to try to target school leavers and women at universities to try to change their perceptions about the industry, including Girls Who Code and Girls Are Investors. There are grassroots initiatives.
Another observation I would make is that we need to be cautious in terms of not diminishing the achievements of the many women who work in fund management but not necessarily in investment management teams. If you look at certain functions within a hedge fund manager, you will see very high representation of women, including finance roles.
Q81 Mr Baron: Even on that, Adam, when you talk about the total number of hedge fund employees who are women, it is still only 20%.
Adam Jacobs-Dean: In total, it is about 27% globally.
Q82 Mr Baron: Yes, but we are talking about here, if you do not mind. I cannot account for what is happening outside these shores. Twenty per cent is still far too low. I think of very good fund managers like Jean Roche at Schroders, Georgina Brittain at J.P. Morgan and Helen Steers at Pantheon. These are excellent fund managers. They should be held up in esteem to try to encourage others in.
When it comes to the exams, it has been my experience that good fund managers do not always study maths or economics. Nick Train studied classics. You do not have to have those sorts of qualifications to be a good fund manager. I just want you to think outside the box a little bit, because these figures are far too low.
Sarah, the figure for the latest Women in Finance Charter is that only 28% of senior roles are held by women. For Yvonne it is slightly better; it is not the worst-performing sector, but still only 35% of senior roles in the insurance industry are held by women. If you look back five years ago, when the Committee did its last report, we can play around with percentages and say we have had a modest percentage increase, but we are still well off 50% gender equality.
We want to see some firms like the make-up of this Committee. Here we are, with three females and two males. Look at the panel: three females and one male. Unless you are telling me that females are not up to it—it has not been my experience that that is the case—I am suggesting to you that you need to do more to get in there and sort this out. I am tired of all these surveys and these initiatives when I am not seeing much progress on the ground. Who wants to come back at me?
Yvonne Braun: I am quite happy to pick that up. Some of it comes down to reputation of the industry and things such as “The Wolf of Wall Street”. What is that going to say to women? There is popular perception.
Some of it also comes down to how you actually go about your hiring practices and your recruitment practices. If I speak from the perspective of the ABI, we are very small; we are just 100 people. We have a 50/50 split in the executive team. We are slightly overweight on women. We hire blind—name-blind and university-blind. We shortlist on the basis of how people respond to three questions. It is quite a lot of work. It kicks away the old certainties: “If somebody worked in X, Y or Z organisation or went to A, B or C university, I am sure they are going to be a good fit.” You get a more diverse recruitment intake.
As you were saying, the good things with a lot of these initiatives is that they do not just benefit women; they benefit diverse candidates from right across the piece. Part of it is how you, in practice, go about these things.
Recruitment is one bit and promotion is another bit. Do you have objective criteria on the basis of which you promote, and objective criteria on the basis of which you—
Q83 Mr Baron: I like what I hear, because often a good fund manager thinks outside the box. There is a risk with the industry of recruiting from a certain cadre, which is not good for the health of the industry. I hear what you say and I like it, but what effort are you making to ensure that that is permeated through your sector?
Yvonne Braun: I can only speak about insurance and long-term savings. That is part of our blueprint. We have a very significant work programme for our members to work through this year, next year and the next four years, at the end of which there will be quite significant progress in terms of the make-up of the industry and the way it feels to work in it.
Mr Baron: I am going to let you off lightly, because at least in the insurance industry a third of women are in senior roles.
Chair: It is worth pointing out, because you are asking some excellent questions, that in terms of the panel make-up today, Adam represents a larger percentage of men than women in the alternative investment management industry as a whole.
Mr Baron: That is very true—25%.
Chair: It is worth pointing out that around this horseshoe, including from the Clerk’s team, we have 36% men, which is larger than the percentage in any industry in the financial sector represented here today, and yet you have probably been thinking as you have looked around the room that this was actually majority female.
Mr Baron: I hope that makes you feel better. You represent 25% in a sector that only has 10% female roles.
Chair: It is more than your entire industry has of women.
Q84 Mr Baron: Sarah, 28% is better than some of the other sectors we are talking about, but it is still poor. You have heard some of the initiatives we have been discussing. It is laudable, but it is a question of actually making them work and making a difference. What are you doing about that, and what is your organisation doing about it?
Sarah Boon: Our members are doing a huge amount. I would absolutely agree with you: 20% or 30% is not enough. We really want to see more women in senior roles. I absolutely echo what everybody has said about recruitment. Recruitment is really important, from as diverse a pool as possible. Certainly when I went to Canary Wharf when I was younger, I thought to myself, “This is not a place for me.” I do not feel that any more. Progress has been made, but there is definitely more to do.
Recruitment is part of it. Retention is something that has been cited by a lot of members, and it was in the Women in Finance Charter annual report. It is something that my members are really focusing a lot on. By retention, I mean people leaving the industry for lots of different reasons. How can we get them to stay? How can we get women to stay? Women may feel that they cannot return after maternity leave. They may be disadvantaged.
A number of our members—Lloyds and Citi—have really great returners programmes. Lloyds offers compressed working for both parents when they return to work, up to when their child is two years old. A number of our members have enhanced parental leave packages. What members are trying to do is focus on where they are losing people.
Q85 Mr Baron: Our report five years ago encouraged firms to revisit their recruitment policies and practices and so on to eliminate bias. We know recruitment is only part of it. You talked about retention. There are other factors as well. To what extent are you coming together, taking you four in front of us this afternoon, and saying, “These are the common areas of concern”—not a list of 500 but focusing on the big issues of concern—and then drilling down together in harmony and agreeing the key points across all your members, to make sure that they are applying what you believe are those lessons, policies and practices? In other words, are you agreeing a common cause and then actually doing the nitty-gritty to drill down into your membership and say, “Can you tell us whether you have these policies in place?”
Yvonne Braun: We have done a tally of the initiatives that members are signed up to, for example Disability Confident, Women in Finance and so on, but a proper audit is the sort of thing that we need to leave to the regulator. What we do, which is very effective, is in this sub-group of the ABI board, which I mentioned, which has the executive sponsors of our members for DEI in it, they have a safe space. They can have a conversation that goes something like, “Gosh, I am really having trouble getting a higher percentage of my staff to give me DEI disclosures. What have you done to make this possible?” It is a useful forum in that respect. As I was saying earlier, they worked up the blueprint and we have just published the one-year progress report on the blueprint.
We also have a DEI network, which is more for people at the working level. That is to compare notes and find out things that work from each other. That can be quite powerful.
Mr Baron: Regulators are busy with a whole range of issues. I am suggesting that you are uniquely placed within your respective sectors to perhaps do more, saying, “These are the common areas of concern. Why don’t we do an audit?” You could agree what that should be between the four of you, and others representing their various sub-sectors, and actually drill down to try to move this issue on. The evidence suggests that it is progress, but it is painfully slow. It is far too slow.
Q86 Dame Angela Eagle: I want to ask about the harder end of some of this, which is sexism, harassment and misogyny in and at work. We know that some of the most awful abuses happen. It has been reported to us. We have been taking anonymous evidence as well. There is a horrible amount of direct sexual assault, sexual aggressions and probably pretty criminal behaviour going on in some of these workplaces. People know who the bad apples are, but nobody ever reports them.
In the end, women who are on the receiving end of this have to put their career on the line to report it; they are the victims, but they never get listened to. They know that if they do report it, they will be fast‑tracked out rather than the perpetrators being dealt with. Does this seem a familiar thing to all of you with your member organisations? The evidence we have been getting demonstrates that it is prevalent in a lot of places.
None of you wants to say anything because you do not want say anything horrible about your member organisations, but the people that are on the receiving end of this—the women that get recruited—do not stay, because they cannot operate in a place where they are not promoted, where the men who are in the club, much younger than them, get promoted ahead of them, where there is ongoing sexual harassment at a low level and sometimes even worse. Is not that the culture we are talking about?
Karen Northey: I want to start by saying that, obviously, it is completely unacceptable. This is a criminal offence and it absolutely should not happen. Our organisation certainly would not condone it, but we also know it happens. You have heard evidence; we have all heard it.
I can only speak to the role that we can play. It may not seem hard‑hitting enough, but it starts with making sure our firms know how to create a good culture. What is symbolic of a bad culture? What are they doing about it? We have our culture guidelines and our culture framework that we push out to members. Are we enforcing against it? I know these are criminal behaviours that need to be enforced against, but through our culture framework we have identified ways that people can spot if their culture is wrong. As you say, sometimes it is obvious, and it should be.
Q87 Dame Angela Eagle: It is not addressed. Everybody knows who the people who behave like this are. We have taken evidence anonymously. Nobody ever does anything to get rid of them. They survive because they know that they are picking on people who are less powerful than them and who are at lower levels in the organisation. Those people who are victims know that if they make a fuss, they are giving up their career. What can be done to deal with this?
Yvonne Braun: What is absolutely critical for any company is to have a zero-tolerance policy on this sort of behaviour. We at the ABI have a speak up policy. It was previously called the whistleblowing policy, but we renamed it because we felt that “speak up” made it clearer that it is not necessarily about financial problems or anything like that. That makes it very clear that we do not tolerate any form of abuse, bullying or harassment at all.
Q88 Dame Angela Eagle: Who has to speak up—the victim?
Yvonne Braun: This is incredibly important. It cannot all be down to the victim. We do training for our colleagues on that. It is the concept of the active bystander: that people do not even tolerate the micro-aggressions and the small stuff, because we know that the small stuff can very easily get out of hand and become more serious. If you make it very, very clear that a healthy culture is the responsibility of all employees, that is what needs to happen.
Q89 Dame Angela Eagle: You can do that in theory all you like, but what is happening is that the well-known perpetrators of this kind of behaviour, who are powerful in these companies, do it with impunity; if anybody complains, they are out. That is what is happening in financial services now, and then we wonder why we recruit loads of women and they do not last.
Sarah Boon: I agree with my colleagues that the behaviour that you are talking about is absolutely unacceptable.
Q90 Dame Angela Eagle: What is the best way of dealing with it, since it is present? It is obviously present from the anonymous evidence that we have taken across the piece. Everybody knows who the perpetrators are. Nobody tackles them. Let us look at Odey Asset Management. Let us use that as an example. He got away with behaving like that, up to and including rape, for 30 years, in full view of everybody. How can we stop that happening ever again?
Adam Jacobs-Dean: The first observation to make is that it is obviously crucially important that we all take note as an industry when these sorts of examples come to light, because we need to try to understand what they tell us as an industry as a whole. I have already spoken about empowering investors. I do genuinely believe that investor scrutiny of what fund managers are doing is important. In fact, our questionnaire that I have described has questions around, “Have you had harassment claims? Have you had claims of bullying?” There is some mechanism to collect data on what is happening in these firms, and it is being looked at by people who are outside the firm.
We need to think carefully about what the regulatory environment looks like. We have clearly heard in previous evidence that the whistleblower line that the FCA operates is not operating effectively as a channel for people to raise issues. There is a good question there in terms of how we could reform that and make it something that women have confidence in in terms of using it to raise issues of harassment.
The culture point is important, because when I spoke to senior women in the industry in preparing for this, they have said, “At my firm people would speak up.” Clearly there must be policies and procedures that back that up. Can we define what it is that makes somebody feel psychologically safe in a firm and able to speak up? If we can identify what those are, you have a baseline to see whether firms across the industry are living up to them.
Q91 Dame Angela Eagle: Some of the culture points that I took from listening to the anonymous evidence that we have been taking include the bonus culture, the drinking culture, the clubby culture, a class culture of everyone coming from similar public schools, and doing your deals on the golf course or perhaps even in the gents toilets—I do not know—but there are not going to be many women getting in the gents toilets, are there? This is the culture that we know is predominant in these areas. What can be done about it?
If everybody out there knows who the problems are, who the harassers are, who the people behaving badly are and that they are too powerful in these companies to be dealt with, how can that be dealt with systemically across the industry? Do we need a whistleblowing line, not to the FCA but an independent one? It is only an independent complaints procedure that has begun to make a difference in this place, for example. What are the answers?
Sarah Boon: Unfortunately, there is not a single answer. It is a combination of things.
Dame Angela Eagle: Give us more than one answer then.
Sarah Boon: First, it is around more senior women and greater female representation in firms. That goes from recruitment, retention, behaviour and culture, all the way through. These may seem like small things, but taken together—
Q92 Dame Angela Eagle: If you go into an overwhelmingly male environment, where people think it is funny to harass women, have bad attitudes towards women or treat them badly, where the companies themselves do not take it seriously and where the women who are on the receiving end of it know that, if they make a complaint, they are out, nothing is going to change, is it? What can we do to change it? We had a report in 2018. Nothing has changed very much since then.
These people are investing pension fund money that goes to women. It is women’s money, and yet in this situation there is almost nobody serving in the investment companies themselves, in the hedge funds et al. There is a lack of representation everywhere. We can sit here and say, “Oh, it is a terrible culture,” but what are we going to do about it? Can we change the bonus culture? Can we have whistleblowing? Do we need quotas? A lot of the anonymous evidence we have been listening to talks about women’s quotas as part of the answer.
Adam Jacobs-Dean: There is pressure on the industry to be more attractive as an employer. People know they need to do better in terms of flexibility of the working environment and the benefits that people enjoy in the working environment.
We have spoken a lot with our members about what it means to do well in terms of retention. There is a definite emphasis on fostering an inclusive working environment. That includes, for example, not having social events that are after work hours, so that they are more accessible for people with childcare responsibilities who might need to go home, and not having alcohol being the central feature of work events. These conversations are happening across the industry, to make sure that we are doing better in terms of the working environment, because people do care about keeping their staff and not losing them.
The observation I would make, based on some of the conversations I had with women in the industry, is that we still have to be careful not to over-generalise, because we do have a problem of women deselecting themselves from the industry due to perception issues about how it is that do not necessarily square with the reality of working in some of the well-governed firms we represent. The fear is that people might be missing out on roles for which they are qualified because they think the industry is a certain way.
Q93 Dame Angela Eagle: Did you represent Odey Asset Management?
Adam Jacobs-Dean: Odey Asset Management was a member firm of AIMA’s.
Q94 Dame Angela Eagle: Did you ever get any complaints about the behaviour that was going on there?
Adam Jacobs-Dean: We did not.
Q95 Dame Angela Eagle: This is it. It is a culture of silence. It is an abusive culture of silence. How can we break through it so we can create a safe space for women when they come into the industry?
Sarah Boon: Adam mentioned the FCA whistleblowing line. I know that has been criticised over some time, but there have been reports of non‑financial misconduct that have been made. Yes, they are small, but there needs to be more light shone on the whistleblower line as another mechanism.
Q96 Dame Angela Eagle: You are asking an individual woman to make a complaint to the FCA, which is the regulator, about the company they work in—and to somehow feel happy about that—because the company itself is not dealing with the problems that she has with an abusive individual, sexual harassment or whatever.
Sarah Boon: I am absolutely not. The point around allies is incredibly important. Creating those cultures where people can speak up within their firms is exceptionally important. Certainly from my experience at UK Finance, if I had a problem I would want to speak to my line manager about it. However, if I had people in my team who did not feel that they could come to me, we have an external whistleblowing line that allows them to anonymously report behaviour if they want to. We see that as part of best practice, but in the event that those mechanisms do not exist in a firm, strengthening the FCA’s role and the whistleblowing line seems to be an independent way to do it.
It does not necessarily need to be the person who is experiencing this behaviour, which is not acceptable. They may feel very terrible about it. They might not want to call the regulator. That is where the idea of allies is really very important. It is not just the responsibility of the person who is affected, but those who know about it, to really break that culture of silence.
Q97 Dame Angela Eagle: The perpetrators do it with impunity at the moment, apart from when they slip up after 30 years, like Crispen Odey did. How can we stop that happening? It is impunity. If you behave in this way, you get away with it because you are powerful or you have a big book and bring lots of money into the firm. You generally pick on people who are less powerful than yourself. Nobody challenges you. It carries on and on and on, and the people that are the victims of it leave. How can we break through that culture?
Yvonne Braun: It needs to be tackled from different angles. The regulator has a role here, not just the whistleblowing line. It is good that the FCA has stepped into the space of non‑financial misconduct.
Q98 Dame Angela Eagle: It has taken a tiny little bit of a toenail into it, but I would not say they have done a lot more.
Yvonne Braun: It was not something that was ever considered in the past, and it is good that it has been recognised that this sort of behaviour can be absolutely toxic to the culture of a firm and to the prospects of a firm, as the Odey Asset Management case illustrates. That is important.
Equally, it is important to do surveys on inclusion metrics, because that is actually a way that one can get at what it feels like to work in a firm. Again, it is the proposal from the FCA. Speak up policies are incredibly important, but of course it is not enough to have something on paper. That actually needs to be regularly enforced with staff—why it is important and what people who feel unhappy can do.
It needs to be owned as a responsibility of everyone. It cannot just be on the person who is being harassed or who suffers the micro-aggression or whatever it might be. Everybody should step in, see inappropriate behaviour and challenge it.
Q99 Dame Angela Eagle: It is human nature for people to keep their heads down, especially when they can see what the power relationships are in particular areas, none more so than in the scenario of a strutting fund manager with a big book.
Yvonne Braun: The strutting, unacceptable fund manager will have another colleague who is male, who is at the same level and who can also say, “Look, this is completely unacceptable. Stop behaving like that.”
Dame Angela Eagle: There is no sign of that happening at the moment.
Yvonne Braun: That responsibility goes all the way up the chain. The other two things that are perhaps just worth saying are, first, that role models are incredibly important. Amanda Blanc, for example, has spoken out very powerfully about the nonsense she has experienced with some of her shareholders in an AGM.
Finally, earlier you were talking about the idea that people are all the same; they all come from the same background, have all been to the same universities, have all been to private school and all the rest of it. That is why this is so incredibly important. It takes you right back to what we are trying to do here, which is break this paradigm where 90% of people in the upper echelons of the City come from professional backgrounds. We need to break that paradigm. We need to get a much wider diversity of people through the organisations and up the organisations. If that happens, you break a lot of this idea that everybody behaves the same way and certain things are accepted.
Q100 Dame Angela Eagle: You cannot do that if you cannot keep your newly recruited, diverse people in the company because it is such an awful place to be and they are treated so badly while they are there, can you? You cannot do it if, as soon as you leave to have a baby, you lose half your bonus and then you get brought back to do some job that is nothing like the kind of responsibility you had before you had your children. How can you break these attitudes without breaking the culture at the top?
Yvonne Braun: That is why we created the flexible working policy with our members, so that people can actually come back and do a job share role, for example, with somebody else and can still progress on their career trajectory. All of these initiatives have that purpose: to break this notion that you have to have a certain work trajectory, you are at work the whole time and that no caring responsibilities will ever intrude on that.
Karen Northey: On a personal level, I agree about the unacceptable nature and that we have to change the culture. We have taken tiny steps, but it will only be achieved through a lot of tiny steps across a lot of things, because there is no silver bullet.
I have been in London for 20 years, working in legal and then in financial services. There has been a significant change in my experience from when I arrived as a young female in London, where there was a drinking culture where all the deals were done over drinks. Now, we have events at lunchtime and we have breakfast. Even social events are less focused around alcohol. Is it enough? No. Is everyone doing that? No.
It is shining a light on bad practice. A lot of the things that have come to light would not have even come to light 10 years ago. There is absolutely not enough progress. There have to be lots of little steps and lots of little changes. A whistleblowing line in isolation will do nothing, but a whistleblowing line gives an option for some, and a bystander policy that empowers bystanders to make a comment might help in some scenarios.
Even something like flexible working for a parent, if it is, “Mothers come back to work after having a baby and they work part-time,” sounds great, except for the fact that, if it is only mothers doing that, it just reinforces the idea, “You are only working part-time. Your career is not important. I am going to promote someone who is prepared to work full-time.”
There are lots of different things to address, and we have not tackled all of them. We have not even identified all of them. We are identifying new things all the time. Sarah mentioned the menopause, for example. I cannot even imagine that ever being talked about as, “Here is a point where things fall apart.” It is the same as the returning to work. That was probably identified earlier when women go off and have babies, but nobody talks about what happens to women in their 50s who suddenly find themselves not being able to perform to the level they feel they used to be able to perform. That is now acknowledged. Lots of companies have policies and there is more awareness, just talking about it. There are lots of things to do.
Q101 Dame Angela Eagle: What about pay transparency?
Karen Northey: That is another step.
Q102 Dame Angela Eagle: What about the bonuses issue?
Sarah Boon: It is an interesting point, because one of our members, TSB, links its bonuses to DEI metrics as well as the company’s financial performance. That is a really strong incentive to ensure that you are in compliance with the diversity and inclusion policies of the firm. That is not widespread across the industry. An element of our bonuses at UK Finance is linked to our behaviour framework, which is very clear around diversity and inclusion. That is driving change, and it could be more widespread.
Karen Northey: Seventy per cent have DEI objectives at exco across our industry, so it is not enough. It is actually widespread.
Q103 Chair: It is interesting, because that is one example, and yet one of the things that people sign up to when they sign the Women in Finance Charter is that they have an intention to ensure the pay of the senior executive team is linked to delivery against their internal targets on gender diversity. Of the ones that have agreed they have an intention to do it, it sounds like you have identified one that has done it.
Sarah Boon: I do not have the data on all of the Women in Finance Charter signatories. We do it. As a member of the executive at UK Finance, I am tied to not just our gender diversity targets but all of our diversity targets. They are discussed at our board regularly.
Dame Angela Eagle: You could have compulsory exit interviews.
Q104 Caroline Nokes: I am going to pick on you, Karen, probably unfairly, because you have twice used the phrase “shining a light”. What exactly is the Investment Association doing to shine a light on incidents of sexual harassment, misogyny and abuse? Are you doing anything?
Karen Northey: Do you mean shine a light on individual cases?
Caroline Nokes: Yes.
Karen Northey: No, that is not our role.
Q105 Caroline Nokes: You have said that a light needs to be shone, but by somebody else. Presumably you are saying the FCA should be shining that light.
Karen Northey: That is one of the options, yes.
Q106 Caroline Nokes: You have also said that there are lots of tiny steps that need to be taken. We heard from John about the tiny steps that were being taken towards gender parity. How long are you prepared to wait?
Karen Northey: On a personal level I wish I did not have to wait at all. It is not that we are prepared to wait. We should not have to wait. As a woman in financial services, I should not have to wait.
Q107 Caroline Nokes: From your organisation there is no drive for change going on.
Karen Northey: There absolutely is. Have we done everything that we can do or that could be done? No, because there are lots of different things that could be done. What we have done is taken some concrete steps. I will talk about what the Investment Association has done as an organisation, as opposed to our member firms; I will leave our members to the side. We have targeted a specific area because, again, we cannot do everything. We have talked about recruitment and diversifying our talent.
Q108 Caroline Nokes: Let us stick specifically with sexual harassment and abuse. We can all see that there is a massive effort going on in recruitment, but those women are getting to a certain level and they are either being disappeared or they are leaving altogether. When you were talking about retention to begin with, before I started asking the questions, none of you was focusing on sexual harassment and abuse, which we know is going on. We heard it from the private evidence we took yesterday. One hundred per cent of the women who were in my group had experienced it, and yet none of them felt that they had a mechanism whereby they could safely report it.
You end up with a situation where you, the trade bodies, are not shining a light. It is The Sunday Times that shines the most effective light, is it not? It strikes me as bizarre that women in finance are choosing the national media as opposed to a trade body or their immediate reporting channels in their organisations. I am just going to get silence again. That is all right. I have questions for all of you.
Adam, there are 45 recommendations to your members around EDI in the form of guidance. Does any of that include any guidance to your member firms as to how to ensure there is a culture in their organisation that does not permit sexual harassment and abuse?
Adam Jacobs-Dean: Yes. We specifically address the sort of framework that you should have in place for escalation of people’s concerns and dealing with that fairly. We have also tried to amplify that through the work we have done with investors. We encourage investors to specifically ask a number of questions that go to process and procedure at fund managers.
Q109 Caroline Nokes: Do you do any follow-up to check that it is happening, or do you issue guidance and leave it to the firms themselves?
Adam Jacobs-Dean: Essentially, yes.
Q110 Caroline Nokes: You said earlier that you had taken note. It was when Angela was asking her questions. Is that enough? We have heard that from all of you—that you are taking note, you are watching, you are looking at what is happening and you are concerned. What about action?
Adam Jacobs-Dean: For us, because the theme of speaking up has been so important in all of the discussions here, that is where we want to focus on in terms of our pipeline, because obviously we have done a lot of work looking at this. We have spoken about it today.
Q111 Caroline Nokes: When you say, “we want to focus,” is that the wrong tense? Do you mean, “That is where we are focusing,” or is this an intent to do something tomorrow?
Adam Jacobs-Dean: It starts with this, basically. It is trying to work out what the hallmarks are of the culture.
Q112 Caroline Nokes: “It starts here,” “We are trying to work out”—months after we heard about Crispin Odey, you are still trying to work out what you are going to do.
Adam Jacobs-Dean: The way that we work is through our committee. We will get people together to try to work out what it means to have a firm in which people do feel they can speak out. How do you make comparisons across firms on that basis? The challenge we have in our work is that you can speak to people and say, “In our firm they would speak out,” because inevitably people will not tell you if they come from a culture where that is not the case.
Q113 Caroline Nokes: That is absolutely true. They do not. Yvonne, you are very proud of the zero tolerance, the speak up campaign and the active bystanders. How are you going to feel if I tell you that, at a major insurance conference, young women are told to wear trousers?
Yvonne Braun: I feel really bad. That reminds me of the 1990s, when I was doing a stint in the City, when I was told I was not in a skirt and I was wrong to go to Middle Temple for lunch. Yes, that is bloody awful. Nobody suggests that there is not still a lot of stuff going on that is completely unacceptable.
I can tell you what we are doing about it. I talked earlier about the DEI blueprint. That is in three themes: attract, grow and advance. Under the “grow” theme we are saying that members should adopt, publicise and enforce consistent zero‑tolerance policies covering all forms of abuse, bullying and harassment linked to work, and they should be in place to ensure that colleagues understand how concerns and complaints will be acted upon in a “speak up, listen up” culture. As part of that, we are also talking about this allyship concept, where we make this the responsibility of everybody, so that everybody intervenes when they witness harassment or even micro-aggressions.
Q114 Caroline Nokes: Should that intervention be a male manager at an insurance brokers’ conference in 2023, so now, saying to a 25-year-old woman, “Make sure you wear trousers?” That is what allyship looks like. “Protect yourself from gropey men.” Who is speaking up there?
Yvonne Braun: I am not suggesting that there is not still an awful lot of utter nonsense that happens.
Q115 Caroline Nokes: Is “utter nonsense” strong enough language to use?
Yvonne Braun: No, it is not. Forgive me. It is completely unacceptable and shocking.
Q116 Caroline Nokes: That is what women in your industry are facing.
Yvonne Braun: It is important not to overgeneralise. I am not here to represent the broking industry. I want to be very clear about that.
Q117 Chair: Is there a particular problem in the broking industry?
Yvonne Braun: That has sometimes been suggested. I am not here to represent them, and I am not here to speak for them. I can speak for my members, who are, broadly speaking, selling products to consumers on the high street and not engaged in the broking business.
Q118 Caroline Nokes: Sarah, it was always going to be your turn eventually. Can I ask a specific question about what sort of advice and guidance you might give around non‑disclosure agreements? I will come to all of you on that. I would just like a quick answer from you as to whether, as organisations, you condone the use of NDAs. Do you ever give any advice to your member firms about not using NDAs?
The message that we have heard loud and clear is that their use is still commonplace, and that the NDA is a mechanism via which a victim, usually a woman, is encouraged to go away with a financial settlement, but the perpetrator is left in place, potentially to go on to harass other victims.
Sarah Boon: We do not offer guidance on this to our members. From my perspective, there are situations where NDAs are appropriate. The things that you are talking about are not those situations. They should not be used. Indeed, the Law Society has been very clear on this point: that they should not be used to cover up criminal activity or for anything that is unethical.
Q119 Caroline Nokes: There has recently been action in the higher education sector to stamp out the use of NDAs. When it comes to sexual harassment, bullying and abuse in the financial sector, should they also be stamped out?
Sarah Boon: There are legitimate ways that they can be used. For example, if we were going to have a secondee come and join us from another organisation, there is a level of confidentiality that we would need in that situation. If it were to cover up poor practices within our organisation or in our members, then they are not acceptable.
Karen Northey: We do not have specific guidance on NDAs. We do have guidance, obviously, on culture and compliance with the law. Covering up something illegal that has happened is not something we would condone. We have not done anything specific on NDAs.
Yvonne Braun: It is clearly completely unacceptable to shut things down and silence people who have experienced these things, but it is outside of my level of expertise.
Adam Jacobs-Dean: We recommend to investors that they explicitly ask fund managers about their use of NDAs in the context of conduct issues, just as a potential indicator of use that might not be compatible with what they are designed for.
Q120 Chair: For the investment management industry, are there firms that ask that of the companies they invest in? Is it something that is publicly disclosed at all, in terms of whether there have been a lot of non‑disclosure agreements from that organisation?
Karen Northey: I do not have an answer to that question. I can see if we can find out for you, but I am not aware of that data being collected. That does not mean that individual firms are not doing it, but I just do not have any collected information on the use of them in that way, or those kinds of questions.
Chair: That would be helpful, because Adam has given us specific information. It would be helpful to know whether other buy‑side organisations also do that.
Q121 Caroline Nokes: Sarah and Adam, in particular, highlighted how regulation might impact differently upon smaller firms. Would you acknowledge that there might be a problem, if smaller firms are going to be cut more slack, in that they could become havens for poor behaviour?
Adam Jacobs-Dean: In terms of the structure of the FCA’s proposals, there are elements of the framework that will apply across the board. That includes the elements that relate to non‑financial misconduct. If you are a senior employee in a small firm and you are being vetted by the FCA, it will take into account issues relating to your conduct. If it is approving your firm for the first time as well, it will also take into account issues relating to the conduct of the staff at the firm. Even for the smallest of firms, that would be completely implicit in terms of how you have to deal with the regulator.
Where the differentiation comes in is the degree of disclosure of information. The FCA is saying that for firms of more than 250 members of staff, you would also have to share information publicly about the composition of your workforce. That tool is unlikely to work for a small firm, because it could be quite identifying of the individuals involved. There is a good rationale for it.
Sarah Boon: I could not have put it better.
Q122 Drew Hendry: The subject of the menopause briefly came up a while back. Sarah, there is some data from the Fawcett Society that shows that one in 10 employees are going through the menopause and 25% of them leave the industry. Are financial services doing enough to support women going through the menopause?
Sarah Boon: If you had asked me that question five years ago, I would have had an absolute blank and not known what to say to you. I would strongly encourage everyone to look at the Financial Services Skills Commission report, because it was absolutely groundbreaking. Now, there is a conversation about this happening. We have menopause policies. We have one at UK Finance, but they are far more widespread.
We also see firms using this as a point of differentiation. For example, Danske Bank offers guidance on the menopause and also offers 10 days a year off, paid, for people who are going through the menopause. We also see menopause peer groups across the industry so that people can talk about it. There is training that is being offered. Certainly, when I started managing people 10 years ago and I had people in my team who were going through the menopause, I had no idea what I was doing in that space, whereas now I have a number of women and I do.
Q123 Drew Hendry: That sounds very encouraging, but I started off the session by asking you a proportion question. What proportion of your members are actually using those kinds of policies?
Sarah Boon: Again, we do not collect data on DEI in our members. We only collect data on the products that members give to their customers and businesses, so we do not have that data.
Q124 Drew Hendry: Do you think it would be a good idea as an industry to have that data?
Sarah Boon: A number of other organisations are collecting that data. The FSSC, which did the report, are certainly following up with a lot of work on this.
Q125 Drew Hendry: Is the menopause still a barrier to promotion for women?
Sarah Boon: I have to talk anecdotally. I have no evidence to support this at all. People are now supported more with the menopause. People understand it more as part of training.
Q126 Drew Hendry: Is it viewed as a negative within the industry? Is it an active problem?
Sarah Boon: It is certainly not by me, but I do not have that data for the industry.
Q127 Drew Hendry: Does anybody else briefly have anything they want to add on that? No. That is a shame. It seems to me that it is a conversation that should be taking a much higher profile within your industry, and yet there is no real input on that.
Karen Northey: There is a little bit of difference in terms of what the question is. Is it a barrier to promotion? We could have that conversation. People may say, “Of course it is in my firm.” As Sarah said, the other question is whether we have got to the point where people know it is a thing. Ten years ago the vast majority of people did not know. Again, it is about gender balance. Is there more education? Is there more support, empathy and understanding? Yes.
Does it remain a barrier to being promoted? Possibly. It depends on whether they are getting the support that they need in individual firms, whether they are getting the support from a medical point of view that they need, and in terms of mental health. There is such a broad range of things that can happen in the menopause.
There may be some work on perception that can be done. Is it a barrier? There will always be cases where it is, I am afraid, but it is really hard to say that it is still a barrier.
Q128 Drew Hendry: I will not ask you to respond, but would it not be a good idea to identify that?
Karen Northey: Yes, absolutely.
Q129 Chair: I want to thank all of you for coming in. Sometimes I feel that you are doing a heroic job of defending some fairly indefensible stuff, so you could add that to your skillset on your CVs now.
I want to do a final quickfire round. I will outline it so that you have time to think about an answer, but I want each of you to think of one recommendation you would like to land with us and see come out of our report, which your particular industry groups would support and find most helpful.
Sarah Boon: Unfortunately, it is one you have already heard from me. We have talked a lot about the role of the regulator; perhaps my former colleagues will not thank me for this, but I really feel that there needs to be adequate training of the supervisors when they are looking at this as an issue.
Chair: That is training of the supervisors themselves.
Sarah Boon: Yes. When the policy proposals are made into the policy, the supervisors are the people who are going to have to supervise against them. It is really important that that is consistent and that the supervisors are doing that in a consistent way, because otherwise you may see disparities across the industry.
Adam Jacobs-Dean: It would be helpful to have something in terms of education and training around non‑financial misconduct, whether it is the regulator that is best placed to provide an industry solution or, indeed, trade associations. Given that you are dealing with sensitive topics that require judgment, it is the sort of thing that could quite easily be addressed collectively.
Q130 Chair: Are you trying to suggest that the hedge fund industry, with all its resources, has not been able to come up with this themselves?
Adam Jacobs-Dean: We have done a lot of role play-based training courses around conduct, so it does work as a format and we have used it. Given that there is an important regulatory overlay, the regulator should also be quite clear about what it expects of firms, so that you are not left with an industry basically making judgment calls on its own without additional guidance.
Yvonne Braun: Given where you are coming from as a Committee, the subject of this inquiry, sexism, and particularly the importance of getting women into senior roles so that they can call the shots and change the culture, I would like you to recommend much more focus on how flexible working and job sharing can be made to work, because it can work. It can work quite powerfully. We know that from Government. We know that from other roles.
You should then re‑recommend that as a focus to Government, because ultimately all of this is not happening in a financial services industry vacuum. A lot of these issues are much broader trends that we read about in the papers every single day. If women are better supported to return to work to job share, as I know the Government are trying to do with the childcare policy, and if men are supported better financially—because shared parental leave is not great—to take their share of caring responsibilities, we can shift the paradigm. If we have more women in senior positions, we will have a very different, much more inclusive culture.
Karen Northey: I have been thinking about this one. I am going to take a slightly different track and think on a personal level, having come into this sector from a non-traditional background, for various reasons. More needs to be done collectively—there is obviously a big role for industry, a big role for Government and for the regulator—about making financial services something that is accessible as a job that people are thinking about.
There are lots of different ways to do that. You have just mentioned childcare. It is about having childcare so that you can think, “I can have a full-time job in the City if that is what I want to do,” or part-time or whatever it is. Make apprenticeships work in sectors such as financial services. They are not just a degree in trades. There are loads of jobs for non-university graduates, school leavers and college leavers.
It is a very long list of asks with the same objective. It is not just gender‑based, but right now financial services is often perceived as an industry that is “not for me because I do not check all these boxes.” The only way you change that perception is all of those little steps. There is definitely a huge role for industry to play, as well as regulators and enforcement agencies. There are all those things to address some of the things that we talked about, but there are lots of societal fixes we can do. Some of them are quite concrete.
Chair: Thank you again for coming and giving us your evidence this afternoon.