Talent, Inclusion, Diversity & Equity helping to improve industry recruitment

Underrepresentation within financial services organisations regarding gender, generation, ethnicity, sexuality and disability, as well as people with a broader range of skills, experiences and industry backgrounds, can not only deter talented people from seeking careers in our sector, but is also a missed commercial opportunity.

Our industry is a marketplace in transformation, and as a result it increasingly demands new capabilities which a more diverse workforce would bring. The findings of research by PwC suggest that more work is needed to make diversity a reality within many organisations.

While most firms in our sector now have strategies in place to promote diversity and inclusion, the reality for many people from underrepresented groups may not reflect the publicly stated aims of their employers. For example, their research suggests that almost three-quarters of the female millennials working in FS believe that their organisations talk about diversity, but opportunities are not equal for all.

Recent research from the Sutton Trust provides another example where bias occurs – that of people with regional accents suffering either perceived or actual career detriment. Tellingly from our industry’s point of view, they found that 41% of university students from the North of England are worried their accent may affect their future success.

This comes at a time when our sector is widening its recruitment net to attract candidates from a much wider socio-economic base in order to reflect the society it increasingly serves.

The reason why diversity is moving up the boardroom agenda in most FS organisations is  that it makes business sense. More than 75% of the FS CEOs who have adopted a strategy to promote diversity believe it is helping them to enhance innovation, customer satisfaction and overall business performance.

In the past, our industry might have seen broadening diversity as primarily a matter of brand and reputation rather than a key way to bridge skills gaps. But with 70% of FS CEOs now saying that they see the limited availability of key skills as a threat to their growth prospects, industry leaders are coming to recognise that they can no longer rely on what has often been a fairly narrow talent pool.

A greater emphasis on diversity and inclusion doesn’t merely broaden the talent pool, it also creates a positive impression of an industry that is attractive to people from all sections of the population. Indeed, 90% of financial services CEOs who have a strategy to promote diversity believe it helps them to attract talent and promotes customer-centricity, as well as increasing trust.

Yet bridging skills gaps is only part of the story. In a sector facing huge and often disruptive change, boards need people with fresh approaches and ideas – if everybody thinks the same and are not open to forward thinking viewpoints, this can limit growth and increase risk.

The pursuit of diversity as a commercial priority also reflects the recognition that a customer-oriented business needs people with a real sense of what customers are thinking and experiencing, so this might also include recruiting people from other customer centric industries to ensure a better understanding of their needs and how to deliver the right outcomes.

There is also a regulatory aspect to this, as Diversity and Inclusion has now become a significant issue for the FCA, with expectations which will be applied to the wealth management and advice industry in the future.

With all this in mind, PIMFA recently launched our new Talent, Inclusion, Diversity & Equality (TIDE) project to help promote the value of the wealth management, financial advice and planning profession and, through our make it. campaign, to encourage new talent to consider this industry for their future careers.

This is a strategic objective for PIMFA and to help meet this we have created a series of engaging and impactful videos, featuring a variety of people from across our industry discussing how they got into the profession, it’s wider value and the opportunities that lie within it.

These videos will sit on a microsite we are creating that will act as a eco-centre of resource allowing collaboration and signposting to the excellent work taking place across the industry and by our strategic partners. PIMFA will officially launch the TIDE website at its Talent, Diversity & Inclusion conference on 7 December.