We are passionate about promoting gender diversity in investment management. An encouraging trend, some institutional investors and their advisors are also embracing this topic.
Wilshire Consulting, an influential investment consultant with approximately $7 trillion in assets under advisement, recently announced a new initiative “aimed to deliver fresh perspectives to client portfolios and promote manager diversity.”
Andrew Junkin, President of Wilshire Consulting, said in a statement, “women and minorities remain underrepresented in our industry, and ensuring that clients are aware of the many talented firms led by these managers is a priority for Wilshire Consulting.”
In addition to renaming their “Emerging Manager Asset Class Committee” to the “Diverse Owned Manager Asset Committee”, Wilshire will be implementing changes to their manager search processes, including mandating at least one diverse-owned firm be included in every search where there are products available, featuring the percentage of women and minority ownership in all standard search books, changing consultant incentive compensation around engagement with diverse-owned firms, and launching educational seminars aimed at developing relationships with these firms in 2018.
As Emerging Manager Monthly noted in its February 2018 issue (subscription required), the formalization of Wilshire’s process follows the Illinois Senate’s No. 9 passage of Public Act 100-0542, which requires that consultants disclose the number of searches conducted in the prior calendar year that included recommendations of minority-, women- and disabled-owned firms.
Although Wilshire does not advise to any Illinois public pension funds, other investment consultants do, such as Callan, Marquette, Meketa, NEPC and RVK.
We look forward to seeing how this initiative of fostering inclusivity in manager searches evolves across the industry.
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