Event Recap (part 2): Diversity & Inclusion: Bridging the Gap in the Investment Industry

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By: Hilary Wiek, CFA, CAIA, Society Volunteer

In my last blog post, I provided an introduction to the excellent program CFA Society Minnesota had in June on Diversity and Inclusion. In this post, I’ll outline some of the key topic areas from the event, drawing upon talks by BlackRock’s Jonathan McBride, Wells Fargo’s Leyla Kassem, CFA, discussions at the tables and then shared with the room, and two panel discussions – one with women working in their organizations on diversity and inclusion issues and the other with women discussing their paths to the leadership positions they now hold. A third post will provide information about where one can read more about or do more to advance this important topic. So here are some thoughts on the topics discussed on June 5:

1.) To have productive conversations about diversity and inclusion:

Assume positive intent. Our speakers challenged us to have an important and uncomfortable conversation. You probably have noticed that you will allow some people to tease you quite mercilessly and you take no offense. Or if you do take offense, you find yourself excusing them because you know that they meant nothing by it. Yet if a stranger made the same joke, your reaction might be quite different. This is one indicator of unconscious biases that we all harbor.

When hoping to have a constructive conversation on the topic of diversity and inclusion, it is good to do what you can to be aware of your biases, realize that the other people have their own biases, and make an effort to act with the assumption that you both have positive intent, regardless of what comes out of your mouths. By doing this, hopefully everyone will give the benefit of the doubt when it comes to word choice and will truly hear the perspectives being expressed.

It is important to note that unconscious bias training will not eliminate biases. The hope is to mitigate biases and have people learn to hire or act around the biases.

2.) Hiring a diverse workforce in the investment industry:

One major problem to getting to a more diverse workforce: pipeline. Many people at the event mentioned that when trying to hire people for their open positions, the applicants were overwhelmingly white males. One leader had assumed that her company was just doing a poor job recruiting, that the diverse talent was out there, but she came to see that many women and people of color opt out of the business because of things they have heard about the lifestyle and culture or they do not even realize what investment roles entail when they are in the process of designing their educational path. The next blog post will list a few real-world programs working to solve the problem of attracting diverse individuals to the industry.

It was noted that the accounting world has been successful in recent decades in identifying potential talent when there is still time to get the proper training. The investment world needs to get to diverse individuals early on and share with them what skills, attitudes, and attributes are needed to be successful so that those who are attracted by those things will know what they need to do to be qualified for investment roles when the time comes.

While schooling is important to get your foot in the door, learning the investment business is very much done through apprenticeship. It is important that young diverse talent has access to the mentors who will guide them through the early years of their career and give them the opportunities to broaden their skill sets at appropriate intervals. Companies can create programs to ensure that unconscious bias does not lead to only a certain type of person being selected for such opportunities.

What’s the goal? 50/50 male/female? Numbers are arbitrary and it could take years, even decades, to get to that level at the current pace. But getting to inclusive is more immediately achievable. The goal is to create an environment where all cultures and backgrounds feel heard and want to stick around. It will be harder to get to 50/50 if your diverse staff keep leaving because they don’t feel welcome.

3.) To get the most benefit out of having a diverse workforce:

The problem: retention. Even if you are able to make diverse hires, you will not garner the benefits of diversity if you are not able to make everyone feel heard (the “inclusion” part of diversity and inclusion), as the struggle to fit into an unnatural mold will be exhausting for many. While people are struggling to conform, they will not feel comfortable providing their best ideas for fear of dismissive attitudes from colleagues. Eventually people will depart, leaving your team back at square one in trying to restock the talent pool. Many firms will see this as a learning moment and assume that people who bring in diverse perspectives are a bad fit and they decide to hire people more likely to stick around – which often means hiring people who look or think or act as the current employees already do.

The solution is to focus the company’s efforts on inclusion. This means getting to know everyone, learning to play to each person’s strengths and listening to their points of view. This may be challenging to some, but it has been proven (see the next blog for research citations) that the more difficult and uncomfortable investment discussions that come from heterogenous teams result in better team decisions. As one speaker said, unanimity feels like a good thing, but hard things should be hard.

One way to work on the inclusion problem is to get to know each other. We have been conditioned to not ask about others who are different at work, to “keep it professional”, but getting to know the people on your team allows for the evident differences to fade and the commonalities to shine through. It also allows people to open their minds to the differing perspectives and realize the value they bring to a conversation. Diverse teams must find ways to bring the diverse points of view out, or the effort will have been wasted.

In a crisis, all of the differences and negative intent assumptions matter less and people come together to get something done. And afterwards the team is stronger for it. As a company, you have to figure out how to get your staff there without a crisis. Managers who are willing to show vulnerability to employees by admitting that this is hard and they need help will get their staff to care. Be fallible. People like the underdog.

I typed pages and pages of notes from this event and there were other really great points made during the morning, but I have attempted to faithfully provide the major areas of discussion. Please feel free to comment on the CFA site, particularly with substantive efforts you have been involved with or are trying that are intended to make a difference in the diversity profile of our industry.

Event Recap (part 1): A completely imagined conversation between two CFA charterholders (CC1 and CC2) in Minnesota

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By: Hilary Wiek, CFA, CAIA, Society Volunteer

CC1:  When’s the next CFA event coming up?

CC2:  June 5, 7:30 to noon at the Women’s Club of Minneapolis.

CC1:  Wow!  That’s long!  What’s the topic?

CC2:  Diversity and Inclusion.  Looks like there will be a variety of speakers, including a Keynote from someone at Blackrock.

CC1:  That sounds like a seriously long sales pitch.  Plus our team is humming along and this is no time to mess with the process by inserting someone who isn’t a good fit into the investment team.  I don’t see the relevance.

CC2:  Yeah, I think I’ll skip.  Sounds like it’s just for the ladies, and there are so few of them in the CFA Society that it probably won’t even be a good networking opportunity.

What actually happened:

Eleven tables of roughly eight places each were filled with women and men (the vast majority were women; I had no idea the CFA Society of Minnesota reached so many!) in all stages of investment career progression.  There were representatives from banks, asset managers (local to global), consultants, and allocators such as pensions and non profits.  The keynote speaker was a man – of mixed African American and Syrian ancestry who had been raised in a white family with two white sisters and one Korean/African American brother.  And he’d worked to purposefully staff President Obama’s administration during both administrations.

There were no sales pitches – these were discussions about human capital and how they interact, a topic of never-ending need for improvement at all organizations.  Best practices in this area will lead to competitive advantage (evidence was provided – see successor blog posts on this), but everyone who spoke admitted to still being on a journey to improve in the area of diversity and inclusion and no one felt they had reached the finish line – and likely never would.  This is a topic area that requires intentionality and high-level leadership support for a dent to be made, and even with those elements, it will still take many years to arrive at an ideal vision.

The event mixed up the formats – interactive presentations, table discussions, and panels.  The assemblage was instructed at the beginning to go beyond discussion of the problems; this has been done for decades ad nauseum.  We were charged with having an important and uncomfortable conversation with the purpose of arriving at concrete things we could do to improve the diversity and inclusion of our industry currently dominated by white males. 

As for whether this event was appropriate for everyone – data was provided from one study that showed that diverse investment teams performed spectacularly better than homogenous teams.  The varying perspectives, and added conflict they bring, provided better researched investment ideas because the teams pushed back harder against colleagues who were given no benefit of the doubt because of any sort of shared tribal affiliations. 

In succeeding blog posts about this event, I’ll dive into further details from CFA Institute research on the subject of Diversity and Inclusion as well as outline aspects of the hottest topic areas in the space.  Finally, I’ll share some concrete steps that firms can consider to better improve the hiring and retention of diverse candidate and staffing pools.

On the Road to Fargo

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Did you know that our name CFA Society Minnesota only tells 90% of the story? While the bulk of our membership indeed resides in the Twin Cities, we have healthy and thriving communities in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and Fargo, North Dakota. This broad footprint provides great opportunities to put investor’s first around the region.

Carol Schleif, CFA, Diane Senjem, Mark Salter and I took a trip up I-94 to the City of Far More, spending a day and a half in Fargo with Society members, local investment industry leaders, and students from North Dakota State University (NDSU). The centerpiece of the trip was the second annual rendition of “Navigating the Financial Markets,” a joint event between NDSU and the Society. About 200 current and future leaders watched as Jim Bianco, CMT tried to convince all that expansions get murdered instead of dying a natural death, Matthew Finn, CFA reflected on current versus future state of the industry, and Carol Schleif, CFA discussed having a long-term focus and gave ideas on hard vs. soft skills.

Prior to the keynote event we were invited to a meeting between the NDSU Bison Fund and their advisory board. Students in the Bison Fund manage a series of multi-asset investment portfolios, spending most of their time on in-depth bottom’s up equity research. Sitting through the meeting I came away impressed by the commitment of the faculty, advisory board and students, and I found myself reminiscing about my own experiences in a student run fund … twenty years ago in Fairbanks, Alaska. I must say that these students are much better prepared than I was at that stage of life, and I made myself a note to see how I might be able to give guidance to my old fund now that I’m on the other side.

To wrap up the first night we were joined for dinner by members of the Bison Fund, faculty at NDSU and leaders in the investment community. The good food brought people together, as is often the case. As we settled in, we shared our experiences, provided thoughts on the future of the industry, listened to struggles of taking path A or path B, and harkened back to the day when we faced those same crossroads.

On the second day we invited a smaller group, comprised of CFA Charterholder members and candidates, to breakfast to discuss global, regional and local CFA Charter Initiatives. The group also touched on ways to further the CFA Charter in Fargo and Sioux Falls including additional program opportunities and efforts to increase awareness and the candidate pipeline.

To close our time out west, Carol met with a group of young women who started a Women in Business Club at NDSU hoping to get to 10 attendees. They blew away that initial goal and have 80 members; the future is bright!

Our mission – advance professional excellence while promoting ethical behavior and fellowship through development and engagement opportunities for our members – is critical no matter where CFA Charterholders reside. While it is challenging to connect across the vast landscape, we are always up for a challenge!

If any of the above commentary sparks an interest in you to connect with our friends in the Dakotas, or if you reside in any of these areas and would like to learn how you can help out, please send our Executive Director, Mark Salter a note at executivedirector@cfamn.org

-Tom

Active Indexing with ETFs: Disruption and Implications: Event Recap

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By Eric Jacobs, Economics Student at the University of Minnesota

On Wednesday, April 11th, 2019, the CFA Society of Minnesota had the privilege of hosting Joanne M. Hill, Ph.D. Dr. Hill has over 30 years of experience in leadership roles at investment banks and asset managers with an emphasis on index and quantitative products, derivatives, volatility and risk management.  She serves as Chief Advisor for Research and Strategy at CboeVest, an asset manager specializing in option-based strategies. Dr. Hill also has worked for Goldman Sachs, Proshares, and higher education. Currently, she serves as the Executive Vice President of the “Q” Group and heads the Research Committee of the CFA Institute Research Foundation Board.  She is also a member of the Financial Analysts Journal Advisory Council and editorial board and was a Founding Member and Co-President of Women in ETFs. In her presentation, Dr. Hill discussed how ETF’s have disrupted investing, trading, and active management.

So how do ETF’s fit into current environment investment strategies and markets? ETFs have continued to evolve as the market changes to serve investor’s needs. In this new market environment, investors have been gravitating away from discretionary, active products and have shifted towards transparent index strategies, lower fees, and strategy-based ETFs. Active management is not dead, it’s just more active within passive strategies. ETFs are being traded actively, and investors who buy and hold ETFs take advantage of semi-active strategy structures from managers.

So why do they appeal to investors? ETFs have a broad range of holding periods and serve a large portion of investor needs. ETFs have attracted significant flows from retail investors, financial advisors, hedge funds, traders, and asset managers. Some key reasons they have grown in popularity are:

  • Access, Liquidity, & Price Discovery
    • On exchange via brokerage account – Can be bought, sold, & shorted like a stock, so simple to initiate and manage exposure over time.
    • Creation/redemption process keeps prices in line with underlying holdings.
  • Lower Cost > Performance Advantage
    • Low cost comes from index structure. Management fee and turnover is lower than most fund products. Lower embedded sales fees. Visibility of strategies and fees fosters competition. Do need to pay commissions to brokers and exchanges.
  • Transparency
    • Daily disclosure of holdings by ETF managers facilitates performance attribution, due diligence, understanding of investment objectives and risks.
  • Variety of Product Choices
    • Asset Class, Sector, Thematic, and Factor Strategies. Wide range of choices with easy access to analysis to compare features from sponsors, exchanges, and ETF websites (ETF.com, Morningstar, FactSet.)
  • Tax Efficiency
    • Lower turnover and capital gains distributions than most mutual funds from in-kind redemption feature
  • Investor Protection
    • Meet regulatory guidelines for stocks, fund products, notes in the country where they trade.

What is the new investment landscape with ETFs? There has been a 25% growth annually in ETFs since 2003, equating to five trillion dollars of market value. Going forward, ETFs are here to stay. They are getting more complex as companies look to service any investor need that there’s enough demand for. ETFs have recently extended past equities and into new markets. There has been significant growth in alternative, fixed income, leveraged, and sector-based ETFs in the last 10 years. As the ETF space becomes more competitive, we are likely to see the accessibility, complexity, and services of ETFs continue to rise.

Breaking up is hard to do – Global Central Banks Struggle with Normalization: Event Recap

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By Eric Jacobs, Economics Student at the University of Minnesota

On Wednesday, April 3rd, the CFA Society of Minnesota had the privilege of hosting Marvin Loh, Senior Global Rates Strategist and Emily Weis, Emerging Market Strategist of State Street. Mr. Loh and Ms. Weis presented their ideas on central banks, global custodial flows, investor holdings, and more, in their presentation Breaking up is hard to do – Global Central Banks Struggle with Normalization.

They discussed how, for the first time since the crisis, central bank balance sheets are expected to shrink. However, in this new normal environment for central banks, balance sheets still remain historically high. The G4 bank balance sheet has increased 400% since the crisis. Of the major world banks, the Fed has made the biggest strides in reducing its balance sheet, while the ECB and BOJ still remain high. Yet, going forward, the Fed will begin to wind down its balance sheet selloff practice as they pivot more dovish. In 2021, Mr. Loh believes we will hit an inflexion point and the Fed will begin to expand their balance sheet again, to keep cash levels consistent with excess reserves.

What caused this shift? Market jitters can explain a lot. The volatility from the December 2018 selloff has not been seen since the crisis, and caution remains in the market as recessionary sentiment continues to grow. Also, some market charts may be signaling trouble. GDP growth begins to roll over after two years of gains, and global expectations are beginning to slow.

How did we get this environment? Trend productivity growth and wealth shifting help explain what we are seeing. Productivity has been continuing to fall among developed markets since the mid 1990’s, and when combined with declining aged population growth, this creates adverse effects on real GDP growth. The shift of wealth concentration can also help explain the new environment. In the current environment, labor income as a percent of gross domestic income is declining while corporate profits, as a percent of gross domestic income, rises. The lowest median household income earners are now seeing salary decrease annually. This leads to a decrease in developed market consumption growth. Given this effect, central banks are pushed to policy to replace income with temporary wealth effects, pushing assets into bubbles. Going forward, this leads to slow growth and longer business cycles. In the future, sector stagnation or stagflation may be the next challenge for central banks.

What are investors doing? In the emerging markets, investors are getting back into currencies, however we have yet to see flows back into EM stocks. In the equity market, most investor money is still sitting in domestic markets, and hasn’t made it back to emerging markets.

In fixed income markets, investors are still cautiously watching the yield curve. While inversions have predicted the last seven recessions, there is at least some reason to believe that this time could be different. In the last 7 inversions, 3m-10yr, 2y-10y, and 5y-30y spreads have all inverted before the recession. This has not happened yet, as only the 3m-10y has inverted. Additionally, in each of the last 7 inversions, the Fed continued to tighten the fed funds effective rate. The Fed is predicted not to tighten anymore, as they try to construct a soft landing. When State Street surveyed institutional investors on whether or not this inversion would lead to a recession, 33% didn’t see a recession, 33% saw one within 18 months, and the rest were mixed in the 3-12 month range. In short, institutional investors are still split on what this current inversion means.

Fixed income investors are buying U.S. treasury bonds across all maturities. From a holdings perspective, investors are holding the ends of the curve, possibly creating upside on the 3-7 year maturities. Emerging markets bonds are also seeing increased capital flows. In currencies, The US dollar is currently in a weaker position compared the DM currencies, but still remains one of the best risk hedges. The Euro remains on the low end of its average, but if Brexit goes relatively smoothly there is upside.