Meketa Investment Group (Meketa), a global investment consulting and fiduciary management (OCIO) firm, today announced the results of its first annual questionnaire aimed at reviewing and evaluating asset managers’ efforts to ensure diversity, equity and inclusion within their organizations. The firm’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Questionnaire was distributed to public and private market managers in Meketa’s internal database in January 2021.
In total, 283 managers responded to the questionnaire, with an average of 195 firms responding per question. Participation was highest for questions regarding policies and initiatives, with many managers abstaining from reporting diversity statistics for decision-making positions such as boards of directors, equity owners and senior management.
Among the questionnaire’s findings:
- Boards of directors and those with equity ownership in an organization are the least diverse in both race and gender. 128 firms chose to report diversity statistics for their boards, with 125 providing those figures for equity ownership. 232 firms chose to report diversity statistics for their firm as a whole.
- Lower-level positions are the most diverse in terms of race and gender. For respondents in the top quartile (having the highest percentage of minority and female employees), operations functions were 48% minority and 57% female. Administrative positions among the top quartile were 56% minority and 100% female.
- Veteran and disabled employee representation was less than 1% across all categories.