Reboot, a campaign group of senior financial services professionals promoting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), has published new research highlighting a slight improvement in average DEI scores for UK financial services firms. The Race to Equality Index, which assessed 392 UK financial services businesses representing almost £1.4 trillion in annual revenue, noted the average score of firms increased to 67 out of 100, up to 65 last year. “While this change suggests that we’re heading in the right direction, we must challenge ourselves as to whether incremental changes are really enough,” said Justin Onuekwusi, Co-Founder of #TalkAboutBlack. “In addition, with both economic and financial conditions likely to be more challenging over the next couple of years, it will be interesting to see if the momentum can be maintained.” In particular, hedge funds and insurance companies have seen the greatest improvements, climbing from 65 to 68 and 66 to 68 year-on-year, respectively. However, asset management firms are lagging behind, with their average score falling from 66 to 64 over the past 12 months. Dimple Mistry and Sachin Bhatia, Co-leads of the Diversity Project Race and Ethnicity Workstream, said: “With there so being many great initiatives to drive change, we would expect the asset management industry to be leading the way. Albeit slow, progress has been made in some areas, but we must ramp up our efforts. We know many asset management firms have put tangible actions in place to attract, develop and retain diverse talent, however this score does highlight that the industry as a whole still has work to do and needs to ensure that creating inclusive cultures remains a firm strategic objective with clear measurable actions.”
