Race & Ethnicity

In financial services, the data that is available on race and ethnicity illustrates the multifaceted challenges both in terms of representation and inclusion.

According to research from the Diversity Project, which includes representatives from Bruin on the steering committee, less than 3% of investment managers are black, and the Bank of England recently revealed that the turnover rate of declared BAME colleagues is higher than that of the Bank as a whole.

Analysis also shows that elite universities - such as the Russell Group which are the most commonly requested academic criteria for role requirements in financial services - do not have proportionate BAME representation. This highlights that as well as transparent approaches to progression, criteria for diverse recruitment and talent pipelining need to be better implemented, which remove the potential for unconscious or implicit bias.

Achieving EthniCity

The independent McGregor-Smith report “Race in the workplace” concluded that too many people are uncomfortable talking about race, and if Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) talent was fully utilised, the economy could receive a £24 billion boost.

The report recommended that “daylight is the best disinfectant” and that the Government legislate to make businesses publish their ethnicity data by salary band to show progress towards racial pay equality. In response, the government launched a consultation on ethnicity pay reporting, estimated to be a deficit of £3.4 billion in the UK.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has also called for mandatory reporting on staff recruitment, retention and promotion by ethnicity. This followed its finding that only 36% of employers collect data on employee ethnicity, and just 3% of organisations measure their ethnicity pay gaps. The EHRC reported that due to a lack of data, employers striving to ensure workforce diversity are unable to remove the barriers to the progression and representation of ethnic minority staff in the workplace..

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