Women in Finance: Is progress in gender diversity helping us to prevent "groupthink" in the financial industry?

Among developed markets, European countries currently have the highest percentage of companies with at least 30% women directors. However, the percentage of women in executive management remains low and hovers at approximately 5% for women CEOs across industries. In the EU, it seems that progress in gender diversity is currently driven by regulation while the most senior management levels continue to remain out of reach for most women. A discussion topic in this context are the ESMA guidelines with regards to gender-balanced decision-making for the financial industry: “Asset managers must put in place measures to ensure their senior management teams are “gender balanced” or risk falling foul of new EU guidelines designed to prevent “groupthink”. 

Topics we discussed: 

• In the EU Finance Industry: what type of regulatory frameworks are currently driving progress in gender diversity? Is this helpful? 
• How can institutional investors’ help drive gender equality? For example, what are they doing to increase the percentage of female portfolio managers? We will discuss concrete use cases from ODDO BHF Asset Management and Berenberg. 
• What is the performance relevance of gender diversity in the financial industry and more broadly, how does this factor into social and human capital investment strategies? 

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