eVestment, a Nasdaq company and a global leader in institutional investment data and analytics, is to make its asset manager diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) data available for investors free of charge in an effort to improve transparency and standardisation across the industry.
The initiative is intended to provide an efficient and streamlined process for diversity disclosure. While the reporting is entirely voluntary, over 20 per cent of the asset management firms on eVestment, representing 6,182 strategies, have responded to the DEI data collection program since January 2021.
“The investment community is on a journey in creating a more inclusive environment and ensuring that asset managers hired by pensions, foundations, family offices and endowments better reflect the diversity of asset owners and the end beneficiaries,” says Lauren Dillard, Executive Vice President and Head of Investment Intelligence, Nasdaq. “Institutional investors representing trillions of dollars in assets already leverage eVestment for data and analytics. Our mission is to build on that community to further the industry progress in diversity and inclusion.”
In January, eVestment launched the updated DEI questionnaire as part of a new industry-wide DEI data collection initiative, now dubbed the Institutional Investing Diversity Cooperative. The questionnaire offers asset managers options to highlight both qualitative and quantitative aspects of their DEI efforts.
Additionally, recognising that asset owners seek to understand the state of diversity and inclusion across the entirety of their portfolios – both public and private markets strategies – Nasdaq is collaborating with the Institutional Limited Partners Association (ILPA) and FCLTGlobal to extend the effort to a standardised approach for making data from private fund managers available to Limited Partners, reflecting diversity of leadership and decision making at both the fund manager and the portfolio company level. As with the IIDC collaboration, this effort encompasses both the quantitative and qualitative, contextual data that illustrates how managers are advancing DEI in their own organisations.
Asset owners are demanding data beyond headline ownership stats, and the new questionnaire gives managers the ability to highlight information like hiring practices and mentor programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion in their organisations.
Key findings from current data collection initiative include:
• 55.3 per cent of key professionals at the firms reporting DEI data are white males. The second largest group is Asian males, at 12.15 per cent followed by white women at 9.43 per cent. Black males only made up 1.86 per cent of the key professionals at firms reporting data and black females made up only .59 per cent of key professionals at reporting firms.
• 322 strategies across 48 firms report that some percentage of the decisions makers on their teams are military veterans.
• 288 firms indicate they have mentorship programs available for women and minorities and 244 firms indicate they have a pay-parity policy in place.
In developing the questionnaire, eVestment recognised that under laws in various US and international jurisdictions providing diversity statistics might not be allowed. For instance, 87 firms reporting to eVestment report they cannot supply DEI data due to firm policy and 74 firms report they can’t provide data due to privacy regulations and laws in their area that impact all or some of the team. Similarly, for very small teams, providing diversity statistics could highlight personally identifying information that firms or members of firm teams might prefer to keep private. In these instances, the commentary sections become even more important.
Existing eVestment clients can access this information at no additional cost.
