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September 08, 2020 at 04:40 PM
Three months after it announced a $1 billion, four-year commitment to help local communities address economic and racial inequality, Bank of America has announced additional steps to increase diversity among the asset managers on its investment platform.
Its chief investment office, which had been evaluating asset managers’ diversity and inclusion policies and practices at the organization and investment team levels through its due diligence team, is now expanding that analysis into its overall assessments of asset managers’ investments. The results of that analysis will factor into the team’s level of conviction for a particular manager’s investment strategies.
The office will also collaborate with asset managers and industry groups who are focused on developing investment solutions that direct capital to diverse managers and provide capital to diverse-owned businesses and populations as part of their underlying investment mandates.
“We recognized the need to embed a diversity and inclusion assessment into the core of our due diligence process,” said Anna Snider, head of due diligence for rand Bank of America Private Bank, in a statement. “We believe that this, along with other environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations, can and should inform investment conviction and play an increasingly important role in our selection of managers and strategies going forward.”
Assets management and the broader financial industry are among the least diversified industries in the U.S.
According to a 2019 Knight Foundation study of asset managers, just 1.3% were minority- or women-owned. Almost 99% of asset management firms were owned by white men. The study also found no statistical difference in the performance of the two groups.
