The financial sector is a male bastion. This must change, as demanded not least by major shareholders. But data protection is standing in the way of change.
There is no shortage of big words. Financial groups such as U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs or the world's largest asset manager Blackrock make «diversity» at the top of the company a condition for the allocation of client funds under management. Last year, the U.S. technology exchange Nasdaq even threatened to delist corporations if they did not bring enough women and minorities onto their boards.
Promoting Unknowns
But action is one thing. The financial industry itself stumbles over the hurdles when it comes to implementing diversity within its own ranks – especially when it comes to data protection. This is the result of a survey conducted by «Citywire» among the heads of leading fund houses.
After all, in order to promote minorities within the company, the institutions first need to know where they can be found – and on a large scale, this can only be done by collecting and analyzing data on the workforce.
Sparse Response
When asked about the gender of employees, this still seems somewhat innocuous. However, if you want to include members of the LGBT community in management positions, you have to ask about their sexual orientation – which often puts you on delicate ground. According to the report, individual asset managers have received only 40 percent of data in internal surveys that they feel they need to promote minorities at the firm.
Fund firms are making the best progress with their data collections in the U.S.; it is already proving more difficult in the U.K., while in France, the collection, as well as the retention of such data, is simply prohibited. In Switzerland, too, there are obstacles, and not just for reasons of data protection. For example, it is not permitted to ask about gender identity in job interviews, and the equal opportunity act prohibits discriminatory working conditions.
Ensuring Anonymity
It is equally clear that the financial sector must quickly solve its big brother problem with sensitive personal data. Many players are relying on methods that are designed to strictly maintain anonymity. At the very least, this should win the trust of the respondents.
In any case, one thing is certain: as institutional investors, financial firms can hardly demand diversity from other companies without taking a pioneering role in the matter.
