I was just reading an article in the FT today describing how Nicky Morgan, the Conservative MP who chairs the Commons Treasury select committee, has written to 33 firms. These include UBS, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Vanguard and Pimco. She points out that they have not supported the Women in Finance Charter, launched nearly two years ago by the treasury.
This charter, (which 162 companies have signed up for), calls for companies to commit to hard targets for promoting women and publish what steps are being taken to achieve the targets.
Nicky Morgan was quoted as saying, “The aim, must be to see all firms in the financial sector sign up to the charter and make a concerted effort to improve their gender diversity, particularly in senior roles,” she added.
The gender diversity subject is a huge and complex one and is something that companies are at last taking seriously.
As a firm active in the fintech market in EMEA and Asia, we have recently conducted some research to analyse our sector and break it down by gender.
We looked at the sales teams of the main players in our market, comprising over 2000 people and analysed their gender, length of tenure and numbers of employers. It produced some interesting results.
The market is exactly 66% male/33% female. Maybe no surprise there. What was striking, was the fact that beyond 10 years’ experience the ratio of women to men is circa 1:5 !
This is backed up by our experience. All our clients ask to see more women when we are working on senior mandates and we really struggle to find them.
So, when people like Ms Morgan bemoan the lack of senior women in the market, maybe it’s not always the companies fault. There is a relatively small universe to target. The wider question, clearly, is why more women choose to not come back to senior roles in sales in the fintech market?
If you would like a copy of the report, please email our head of research, Chris Nott at chris.nott@cityexec.com
