A study into diversity in the asset management world has shown that recruitment and culture are key hurdles in achieving diversity in the asset management world.

Asset management consultancy Longwater Partners interviewed over 500 female investors and found that 71% of women surveyed said they were “regularly the only woman in the room.” Gender diversity is a recognised issue in the financial services industry and the survey found that over 80% of investment staff are male. 90% of the women interviewed believed that culture is the defining issue in diversity.

“Without a widespread cultural shift, no single change in policy will lead to lasting improvements. For changes to be long-lasting they need to be driven from the Boardroom and enacted simultaneously. Unchecked, the investment industry will look inappropriate and obsolete in the contemporary world,” Longwater Partners said.

A recent Morningstar research paper had earlier found that less than 20% of fund managers have female board members. 

The Longwater study also focussed on recruitment and found that as many as 85% of the senior women interviewed for the survey said they were concerned that interviews “favour the confrontational or are unnecessarily biased towards male traits.”

Over 70% had studied finance, economics or technical sciences at university, whilst only 11% studied humanities. “It’s clear that in order to get more women in, asset managers need to be appealing to and selecting from a greater variety of academic backgrounds,” Longwater Partners said.  

The majority of the women surveyed mentioned career development, often in the context of their gender and 85% are concerned about their development. Nevertheless, only 10% of respondents said they found female networking events beneficial

“I’ve never experienced serious discrimination, but being the only woman in the room starts to feel like you are in some sort of alternate reality… and the men don’t seem to notice unless you point it out to them,” said one of the interviewees.  

Longwater Partners conducted structured interviews with female fund managers and analysts across the major asset classes and at varying stages of their careers in partnership with M&G Investments.