by City Hive
At City Hive, we never stop talking about how to bring
cultural change to the industry. We continue creating opportunities to raise
the profile of our corporate members that Stand With Us.
In recent months this has included speaking on key issues
including the importance of culture, diversity and inclusion in our industry,
BAME issues (and our issues with blanket terminology, neurodiversity,
governance and looking forward to the regulatory landscape and changes that may
come upon us.
Not afraid to confront challenging topics, we curated an
evening conversation on International Day for the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination – a frank
discussion of what people of colour really talk about when no one is
listening in, to shine a light on daily experiences.
We held our exclusive event where we interviewed senior
talent from our Founding Members, to talk about their very different journeys
and experiences that brought them to our industry. We joined Brooks Macdonald
at their offices to talk to their global staff about culture, inclusion and
belonging.
You may have seen Bev Shah interviewed on BBC1’s Panorama
about the importance of culture, especially in the wake of the Woodford scandal
that the programme focused on, causing a stir on social media amid the realisation
that most news stories about our industry are not positive. And with
characteristic early morning energy, Bev also became a fixture on BBC Breakfast
Briefing, brightening up the Brexit-heavy news.
We enjoyed challenging tired perspectives with calls to
action on panels at Citywire Wealth Manager, Aberdeen Standard, Vanguard,
Credit Suisse, M&G Prudential, the Prince’s Trust, MHP, Refinitiv Lipper
Fund Selector Forum, Money Marketing Conference, Regulations and Compliance
Summit, European Sustainable Investment Conference - to name a few.
We’ve also had the honour to judge the Women
in Investment Awards and Portfolio
Adviser Wealth Adviser Awards, Financial
News Asset Management Awards, We Are the City Rising Star Awards
and the Princes
Trust Enterprise Challenge. We were shortlisted for a PRI
award for our Treasury-commissioned research into a Women in Finance
charter in Brazil.
And underpinning are our concrete actions to support
industry change. We spoke with leaders in diversity and inclusion, sales,
marketing and distribution as we launched our City Stars programme to
support mid-career talent, and to lay the ground work for our innovative
industry Mentoring
programme. We met with the Bank of
England, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Treasury to discuss
industry issues and pathways to change. We issued a report on the gender pay
gap in our industry – with calls to redress the imbalance.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes we have been preparing to
revitalise the Ethnicity workstream at the Diversity Project. We are working on
a study that will examine the UK’s 40% gender pension gap and what our industry
can do as people change the way they save and invest.
And we didn’t forget to have fun – amid the awards dinners
we onboarded our newest recruit, Scout,
and we are preparing for our annual
International Men’s Day Quiz.