It falls on leaders to ensure diversity is achieved across the board, whether that is diversity of gender, race, age or background, by creating the right environment in which everyone is given the opportunity to succeed. Leaders in private wealth and the wider financial services industry must be held accountable and begin breaking down the barriers still at large to build a more inclusive industry for all.

Barriers

Being transparent about the potential barriers to progression is a difficult but integral first step in improving gender diversity. Closed networks, unconscious biases or a lack of gender‑diversity commitments are just some of the obstacles faced by women across financial services. For years, these have been slowly pulled down by those committed to creating a more diverse workforce, but the reverberations of these barriers are still felt across the industry and, therefore, more must be done to dismantle them.

Although progress has been made in addressing the systemic issues that lead to gender inequality in financial services, recent research by Fox & Partners shows that the industry still has a long way to go. According to the data, male board directors at FTSE 350 financial services firms earned 66 per cent more than women in the same role in 2021.[2]

If the industry is to keep up the momentum and continue to drive forward diversity, collective action is needed and it must begin from the top.