First Sentier Investors, the US$180 billion asset management firm formerly owned by Commonwealth Bank of Australia, has just announced the appointment of Melanie Halsey as chief people and culture officer, based in London.
According to a statement from Chief Executive Officer Mark Steinberg, Halsey has led broad strategic cultural transformation programmes in the areas of diversity and inclusion, corporate social responsibility and employee engagement, “which we know will play a pivotal role in our ongoing success”.
Those points were underlined by an outline of her new responsibilities: “to design and implement strategies that will attract, engage, and develop employees and help the business build a high-performance culture, based on its values and reflecting the evolving changes in workplace culture globally”.
First Sentier’s move reflects the growing recognition of the need for diversity, inclusion, and environmental, social and governance considerations in the asset management and institutional investor universe. It’s also worth noting how First Sentier’s senior management link such a policy to the drivers of the company’s future growth.
According to a person familiar with the matter, First Sentier is driving its people-based programmes as a critical priority in reinforcing its authenticity as a responsible business. Furthermore, as a lynchpin in the ambitions of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group to build an $885 billion global asset management business, First Sentier has, since its acquisition by MUFG in late 2018, been clearly at the forefront of the industry’s strongest growth momentum.
For many inside and outside the industry, such impetus can’t come soon enough. Take, for instance, the findings from Bloomberg Intelligence in April 2021 of Halsey’s working environment, the UK financial industry. It found that less than 1% of UK asset managers are black – a major underrepresentation for the black community which accounts for 17% of London’s population.
Also, UK asset managers are “lagging with LGBTQ+ inclusion” while “only slight progress has been made to narrow the asset management industry’s gender pay gap”, which stands at 29.4%, according to the Bloomberg report.
And that is just one recent report out of many others, covering many other regions, all highlighting how far behind the people whose assets it is supposed to be managing the current asset management industry is.
First Sentier’s peers, and its competitors in the drive to expand global asset management platforms, should be looking seriously at what they need to do to step up in this vital regard. The bets for growth are clearly on diversity and inclusion, and only an irresponsible fiduciary would drag their feet on this issue.
