Some Thoughts on Empowering Women in Finance

My firm hosted its second “The Future of Finance is Female” event on Friday, October 29th. Our virtual symposium consisted of conversations with leading professionals in the markets business, all 8 of whom are female.?Here’s a link to our?agenda.

We hosted our first event back in 2018. Since then, so much has happened, much of it very challenging. We have all had to make many adjustments to our daily lives. Fortunately, on the business front, we have been able to incorporate and leverage technologies like Zoom. There are certainly benefits derived from newfound flexibilities in working from home. But if I miss one thing, it’s that on-the-fly collaboration that comes from being physically among colleagues. In our industry, we learn from each other. Work from home has been much easier for those established in the industry versus those who have less experience. For those in the early stages of their careers, mentorship is critical. And because this process of learning is much more effective in person than on a screen, the post-pandemic period has certainly made mentorship more difficult. This issue is compounded for younger female professionals, given the under-representation of women at senior levels on the markets, banking and investment management sides of the business.

Some Data

On the asset manager side, the push to recruit women for junior roles has been met with some success. However, this has not translated as readily to female advance to senior roles. Only 12 percent of the top ranks of private equity firms, for example, are made up of women, according to Preqin.?Barclays reports that less than 20% of roles in Sales and Trading are filled by women in the industry. And according to Morningstar, only 11 percent of fund managers in the U.S. are female as of the end of 2020, a percentage has remained unchanged for the past decade. Individual funds that are managed only by women dropped to 2 percent in 2020, from 6 percent in 2001.?

What We Sought to Do

Our symposium showcased the expertise of leading female professionals in the markets industry. We had two main goals. First, we sought to bring the content. Markets are as perplexing and risk management is as demanding as ever. Investors are always confronted with unknowns and need to make decisions with incomplete information. But today feels different. Monetary policy is in flux, inflation is emerging and by most measures, valuations are elevated. Being in the market is risky, but so too is being out of it. These 8 women were in a great position to help us all tackle these critical areas of uncertainty and, in the process, help us find value in markets.

Our second motivation for hosting this event was to contribute to the empowerment of women in our industry.?By providing a forum that emphasized the prowess of our speakers on the important topics we are all seeking to better understand, we believed strongly that female expertise in markets – not just in the finance industry broadly, but in markets specifically, would become more self-evident.?We envisioned that hearing from our speakers on their career paths, what they’ve confronted, how they’ve managed to succeed, and what advice they could share would be a source of valuable perspective and inspiration for professionals in the earlier parts of their career.

Creating Alpha Through Engagement

Sincere thanks go to our speakers for sharing their valuable insights not just on their crafts but on their paths. This subject matter expertise is of great value to the investment community at large. And based on all of the emails I have received from attendees, the personal perspectives shared were really welcomed.?I asked these speakers to lend their time, and each said yes. The result, I believe, was alpha creation, moving the ball forward just a little bit through engagement.

This reminds me of my favorite quote…it’s from a book called the Diamond Cutter:

“Give, give, give to others; make sure deals are win-win for both sides. Again, it’s not the amount of money involved, its maintaining – all day long – a truly generous, creative flowing state of mind that wants to see everybody prosper…a group of people acting in concerted charitable way create imprints that flower as a shared experience such as a successful company or a more prosperous nation.”

They say there’s no free lunch in markets and I think that is the right starting point. But positive engagement is indeed a free lunch with lots of ways to win.

~ Dean Curnutt