Jensen Partners, a woman-owned executive search and corporate advisory firm for the alternative investment management industry, today announced the launch of DiversityMetrics™ – the first software platform to combine self-reported diversity data and human capital management technology specifically designed for asset managers seeking to quantify, measure, report and improve workforce diversity and inclusion – both within their own organization and across their portfolios.
The DiversityMetrics™ platform features a high-tech, high-touch approach that combines customizable data visualization tools with verified demographic data on more than 25,000 investment and distribution professionals, including 8,000 who identify as having a diverse background, working at more than 600 alternative investment firms around the world.
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“We know that the alternative investment industry has a diversity problem, and each new data point and anecdote provides added evidence that we can use to identify where the gaps are and make specific recommendations for progress on DEI,” said Sasha Jensen, CEO and Founder of Jensen Partners. “The power of the DiversityMetrics™ platform is that it allows alternative asset managers to quantify and qualify the intersectionality of race, class and gender across their workforce, and then use that data to make data-driven decisions about best practices and ensures that the slate of candidates in any given human capital engagement are richly diverse.”
The DiversityMetrics™ platform can be used to benchmark large financial firms against top competitors, enabling a step-by-step roadmap that includes realistic goals and specific areas of improvement on DEI. Other applications include determining the promotion rate of men versus women, calculating the rate of people of color in senior positions, and identifying hiring trends based on candidate gender and ethnicity.
“Asset managers have repeatedly made commitments to improve workforce diversity and inclusion, yet there still has not been meaningful progress,” said Jensen. “Our platform changes that dynamic by bringing increased transparency and accountability to hiring decisions and talent management. Our vision for DiversityMetrics™ is to take the mystery out of DEI, helping transform financial firms to make them more inclusive and diverse at every level of the organization.”
The methodology behind DiversityMetrics™ relies on both quantitative and qualitative information to generate a holistic picture of how each alternative investment firm stacks up against key diversity objectives. Jensen Partners’ team of twelve data scientists continually build on nearly a decade worth of data as they compile the latest anonymized intersectional demographic data. DiversityMetrics™ quantitative data inputs include self-reported and third-party data on the racial and gender diversity of each investment and distribution professional. Qualitative data inputs include anonymized survey data and employee assessments. Both the qualitative and quantitative datasets are used to calculate the JP Diversity Index — Jensen Partners’ objective empirical rating system which assigns a score to asset managers to determine where they are in their DEI journey based on intersectional factors such as rate of seniority of women and people of color, rate of retention, promotion rate, and the structure of the DEI team. This proprietary score also allows firms to benchmark themselves against their peers and is a useful tool for making data-driven decisions on how to improve DEI efforts.
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Using DiversityMetrics™, Jensen Partners recently analyzed the diversity of distribution and investment professionals at the 20 largest credit firms and found that just one in four credit professionals identify as women, and only one in five identify as a person of color. Digging deeper, only 1.2% of all front-office credit professionals identify as Black and only 1.9% identify as Hispanic/Latinx. Additionally, less than a third of Black and Hispanic/Latinx professional held in senior positions at their respective firms.
Similarly, DiversityMetrics™ found that of the 2,665 distribution professionals employed at the top 45 private equity firms (representing a combined AUM of over $5 trillion), only 2.5% identified as Black and only 2.8% identified as Hispanic/Latinx. In comparison, Caucasians accounted for 75% of total distribution professionals at the top 45 private equity firms.
