More senior women needed in the financial services industry

According to the 30% Club – the initiative set up by Dame Helena Morrissey to bring about better representation of women in British companies – women currently make up 27 per cent of board membership on FTSE 350 companies and 27 per cent at executive committee level at FTSE 100 businesses.

Some of these companies are in the financial services sector: Women make up 30 per cent of the executive committees at Standard Life Aberdeen, Aviva, Lloyds Banking Group, RBS, Legal & General and Brewin Dolphin.

Others such as Hargreaves Lansdown, St James’s Place Wealth Management and RSA Insurance Group have all signed up to the commitment to get 30 per cent of their executive committee consisting of women.

Diversity of thought leads to better performance and better client outcomes, and there’s a lot of evidence on this.Anna Stupnytska

There are many initiatives to encourage a pipeline of women into the industry, but according to some of the female figureheads in financial services, to get to the top is as much about personality as anything else.

Leadership stereotypes

Tulsi Naidu, who was appointed chief executive of Zurich UK two years ago, says women who have got to senior level have pretty much had to forge their own work identity as there are few “stereotypes” that create an image of a woman being at the top.

She explains: “I think the more senior women who have made it through are very resilient; you are in a minority and you are different.

“You have to be more entrepreneurial and have to make much more of the running.

“I don’t think it’s trying harder. The stereotypes of what leadership looks like, it’s typically more likely to be men. Senior women who have made a career – almost by definition – don’t fit with those stereotypes, and there aren’t enough women to make those stereotypes.

“They’re forging their own path.”

The 30% Club, which has chapters around the world, says this is important because diversity in companies makes a huge difference to the culture of a company, and helps it to make better decisions.

A spokeswoman for the 30% Club says initially the focus was on 30 per cent of FTSE 100 boards being made up of women, but many female non-executive directors were appointed.

She says: “Diverse boards make better decisions, but [changing non-executives] is an easier decision to make.

“What really makes a difference to the culture of a company is when the actual operational management is more diverse, and that’s what we spend most of our time focusing on.”

Certainly Anna Stupnytska, head of global and macro investment strategy at Fidelity International, and an active spokesperson for women in the workplace, says that she tends to come to different conclusions than her – many – male colleagues, although that might be by virtue of having a different social background to them, rather than just because of gender.

She explains: “Diversity of thought leads to better performance and better client outcomes, and there’s a lot of evidence on this. I’ve sat in a room of 30 people and I’m the only female and I can see how groupthink works.

“If someone has a different view, they don’t want to bring it to the table because it’s not the right environment and they don’t want to be seen as a troublemaker.

“I have a view and I’m going to contribute and they can think whatever they want to think. I believe I can make a contribution which is different, and ultimately a different view should enrich the debate.”

She says that where she has seen this specifically relates to her background of growing up in Ukraine. She went to a conventional state school, and had no family exposure to finance, unlike a lot of her peers. 

Although she was educated at both Oxford and Cambridge universities, she has a more thorough understanding of an emerging market economy than the data-driven public school educated cohort that she works with. 

This has led to her making different judgement calls, she says, often leading to a positive outcome.

Making a return

In terms of specific changes to the workplace over the past 10 years, there have been active attempts to make changes, with varying success.

For example, some companies make huge efforts to adapt to mothers with young children.

John Barrass, deputy chief executive of adviser trade body the Personal Investment Management and Financial Advice Association, says that many companies have set up return programmes that give people – mainly, but not exclusively, women after having children – help when returning to the workforce.

He notes: “They are taking women onto the programme, giving them a [re-education] about its business, allowing them to work for a shorter period of time so women can reabsorb the approach and develop ways of dealing with the the big changes in their life.

“Maybe they started off their career when they weren’t raising a family and have now come back with extra responsibilities. How do you manage work-life balance?”

To do this, many companies offer workshops and access to mentors that help women work out how to manage their new life. 

Unconscious bias

At the lower level, attempts are made to encourage more women into financial services companies to start with.

Ms Stupnytska says there have been some attempts at removing “unconscious bias” from the recruitment process.

She says: “It’s the idea that when you’re interviewing someone, you might be biased towards someone who is of a similar background and has a similar way of thinking, [and] against certain criteria that might fit into these stereotypes.”

However, unconscious bias training has not proven to be particularly effective, she suggests, and moves are afoot simply to make recruiting panels more diverse.

One area of positive change has been general informal attitudes to women in the workplace – Ms Naidu says the era of casual sexism or harassment seems to have gone.

“Where we used to see pockets of fairly poor behaviour – inappropriate comments and inappropriate interaction – I just think there’s no room for that in this day and age,” she notes.

She adds that she has never been made to feel uncomfortable as a woman, and that any challenges she might have found in the early days of making her career were simply issues of experience and self-confidence.

Ms Naidu says: “I look back and think I had to find my feet. I didn’t think it was about being female.”

Nonetheless, according to Mr Barrass, unconscious bias does still exist in certain workplaces – asking female colleagues attending meetings to get the coffee, for example.

He says: “We’ve got to get away from these biases and get to the point that women and men can be effective in different ways.”

Melanie Tringham is deputy features editor of Financial Adviser and FTAdviser.com

Entries are still open for the Financial Adviser Diversity in Finance Awards, which take place on July 3 2019 and will celebrate companies in the industry striving to make their workforce more inclusive and diverse. To enter, visit: www.ftadviser.com/difa