The financial services industry needs to “look for the opportunities” that can result from investment in diversity, equity and inclusion, a speaker at the FinovateEurope conference stated.
The comment was made by Morgan Stanley’s Sanghamitra Karra, EMEA head of the Inclusive Ventures Group, during the fireside chat ‘Why Diversity Matters – The Case For Diversity For Your Organisation; Your Team; Your Customers & Your Revenue Growth’.
Within the financial services industry, improving diversity can lead to opportunity, resilience and innovation benefits, Karra said. Intersectional diversity creates a “stronger overall unit”, with the consideration and understanding of a broader range of perspectives allowing for the faster solving of industry challenges.
Fear of failure around diversity initiatives needs to be eliminated, she said, with the focus instead being the certainty that work in this area is “the right thing to do” both on a personal level and a business level.
The financial services sector is “all about looking for opportunity,” Karra said — and investment in diversity is an opportunity that is all-too-often ignored. She cited research predicting that 60 per cent of UK wealth will be run by women by 2025, something that reinforces the importance of firms developing a better understanding of their changing client bases. Without this investment, systemic risks will be increased and chances for development could be missed.
Karra compared the importance of portfolio diversification in financial services to the importance of employee diversification, emphasising the opportunities and resilience that such initiatives can offer firms.
Innovation is often found “on the peripherals” rather than “at the centre of the conversation”, Karra argued. Those who find themselves on the peripherals can provide new perspectives and a wider range of ideas to companies, identifying new opportunities for innovation across the industry.
In order to overcome challenges around diversity, Karra affirmed that diversity needs to be consciously acknowledged as a benefit to companies. It must be embedded into the culture of organisations and part of day-to-day operations on an individual and organisational level rather than being treated as an afterthought.
“Everyone needs to be aware of this,” she asserted. Change can be driven by individuals, but it needs to be seen as a collective responsibility rather than a separate arm of an organisation. While there may be “champions” tasked with keeping diversity front of mind, it must be something that is “second nature” to the company as a whole.
Karra concluded the panel with an optimistic outlook on diversity in the financial services industry, observing that “doing good and making money are coming together a lot more than they used to.” Real change is possible — “if we put our minds to it.”
