Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

For the second year, Albourne participated in She Can Be, an event based on the initiative led by The Lord Mayor’s Appeal charity. She Can Be endeavors to empower young women to make informed decisions about their careers and allow them to see all of the great work that London’s businesses are doing to make their workplaces more inclusive for women. The four key skill sets the initiative encourages are: communication, confidence, taking initiative and problem solving. Albourne hosted a group of young women (aged between 17 and 18) from the Folkestone Academy in Kent, providing an interactive online session aimed at introducing alternatives and some of the exciting roles within finance today. This year’s agenda featured a game aimed at demystifying commonly used financial jargon, a role-matching game and several films on what it’s like to work at Albourne. “We believe that taking part in this event will help young women have the confidence to take on careers where they may be underrepresented. As a global company, Albourne is committed to fostering, cultivating and preserving a culture of diversity and inclusion; promoting an increased female presence in finance aligns with Albourne’s efforts towards a diverse and inclusive workplace,” commented Clare Cuming, Head of Communications at Albourne. For more information on this event and how you can support this initiative, please click here.

Albourne has just published a film on its recently launched Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) Questionnaire. Please click below to watch the clip: The film encourages managers to complete the questionnaire, and covers why this is an important first step in increasing transparency around the alternative industry’s efforts to embrace D&I. The new and freely available D&I Questionnaire, produced by Albourne and AIMA, is available for all alternative investment managers. It provides a means for managers to supply information to investors in a standardized format. For more information on this questionnaire and Albourne’s D&I initiative, please see the relevant news release here.

A new and freely available Diversity & Inclusion ("D&I") questionnaire is available for all alternative investment managers. This is an important step to increase transparency around the alternatives industry’s efforts in embracing D&I. The motivation to adopt D&I best practices is becoming widely accepted; the practical aspects of this, however, remain a work in progress. Alternative investment managers wishing to complete the questionnaire can do so on Albourne’s manager portal: MoatSpace or by downloading the word document at AIMA.org.

Committed to Diversity and Inclusion, alternative investments consultant Albourne Partners has published a film highlighting the importance of women’s voice in the financial world. 6 March 2020 – Ahead of International Women’s Day (8 March 2020), Albourne Partners has released a film featuring the female members of Albourne’s Senior Corporate Planning Committee*, who put the spotlight on the significant role women play at the company, and the achievements that they have accomplished over the years. Clare Cuming, Head of Communications at Albourne Partners, commented that the team wanted to produce an inspiring, empowering and informative piece focusing on the importance of having a voice in an industry that is striving for equality and diversity. Staying faithful to its pledge to be an equal opportunities employer, the global alternatives consultancy firm is proud that women represent nearly half of its workforce. “Women occupy positions across all functions. Some of us joined as recent graduates and have worked our way up to senior positions while others have come with a wealth of experience from the alternative investments industry having held senior investment roles at institutions and funds. Today, at Albourne, women hold high-ranking positions such as Chief Operating Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Head of Europe, and Head of Cyprus,” stated Cuming. Meropi Stavrou, Head of Human Resources, added that as a global company, Albourne Partners is committed to fostering, cultivating and preserving a culture of diversity and inclusion. “Our D&I policy underlines that the collective sum of the individual differences, life experiences, knowledge, inventiveness, innovation, self-expression, unique capabilities, and talent that employees invest in their work represents a significant part of Albourne Partners’ culture, reputation and overall achievement,” she explained. Albourne’s message is a simple one – Be Inclusive, Be Kind, Be Equal.

Committed to Diversity & Inclusion, alternative investments consultant Albourne Partners actively engages in events promoting D&I principles and practice. London, 18 February 2020 – On 13 February, Albourne took part in She Can Be…, a London-based event and initiative, created and organized by The Lord Mayor’s Appeal charity, with the aim to inspire young women to consider career paths in the City. The event was constructed to educate, empower and expand young women’s perceptions of their career options, and encourage them to pursue as many opportunities as men do. She Can Be… was a full-day event, where young women, aged between 14 and 15, visited Albourne’s London office to learn about the business. Albourne’s morning session was hosted and organized by Albourne’s Head of Communications, Clare Cuming. The young women received an introduction to Albourne and then took part in three workshops. Albourne representatives (in addition to representatives from the other 24 participating companies) then joined over 250 students for an inspirational afternoon session. For recent press coverage of Albourne's initiative, please see the following Pensions & Investments article. Albourne Partners' participation in She Can Be… Earlier this year, Albourne’s Tathata Lohachitkul, Portfolio Analyst and Partner, was among the speakers at CAIA San Francisco Diversity and Inclusion event, aimed at identifying current practices, perspectives and what needs to change. In addition, Jinal Patel, Operational Due Diligence Analyst, joined AIMA’s breakfast panel in New York to discuss Diversity and Inclusion in the Hedge Fund industry focusing on the key principles identified in AIMA’s recent publication The Alternatives. On the occasion, Isela Rosales, Chapter Executive at CAIA, thanked the speakers for being such passionate speakers. She commented, "We received many compliments following the events by our attendees and I witnessed the crowds continuing to linger to speak with the presenters personally following the panels. We appreciate the time and energy they dedicated from their busy schedules to support CAIA and AIMA." Albourne Partners places great emphasis on the value of Diversity and Inclusion and is actively engaging in industry events that promote this drive within the Alternative investments world. Albourne encourages fund managers to include policies and statistics on diversity within each of their ownership structures, its lead decision-makers and its broader organization. Further, Albourne Partners has put forward a relevant proposal in its Investor Manifesto II which recommends that managers document a Diversity and Inclusion Policy and implement practices that foster Diversity and Inclusion.

The global alternatives community has published a Diversity and Inclusion guide in a push to attract the broadest pool of talent to the industry. This paper: brings hedge fund leaders’ perspectives on the competitive advantage of having a diverse team; establishes D&I practices as a strategic senior management matter; provides 45 practical recommendations to enhance diversity and inclusion (D&I) in hedge funds. A woman from a New York housing project who becomes co-CEO of the largest hedge fund firm in the world. A young man who learns investing from scratch in order to provide for his family. A woman who leaves the former Eastern Bloc and pays her way through Harvard so she can learn how capitalism works. A man who doesn’t believe those who tell him finance isn’t for people like him, and goes on to gain a doctorate in econometrics. These are just some of the stories of the hedge fund industry. Our industry has always attracted pioneers; hedge fund firms are staffed with people who refuse to accept the status quo. This pioneering spirit is now being turned inwards, as hedge fund firms examine the composition of their own workforces. Despite leading the investment management industry in many fields, hedge fund firms still face challenges when it comes to attracting and retaining diverse talent. These challenges are not, of course, entirely of the industry’s own making. Social norms in many countries deter women from pursuing quantitative subjects, for instance, and thus limit the pool of talent available to hedge fund firms. Further, the small size of most hedge fund firms limits their ability to search out talent, meaning that those who are not already familiar with the industry may have trouble finding a way in. The attached paper, was produced by AIMA in partnership with EY. This paper is intended as a first, partial answer to the question of what hedge fund firms can do to promote D&I. Before that question can be answered, however, we must first explain what we mean by diversity and inclusion. This paper will use the definitions adopted by the AIMA Diversity and Inclusion Steering Group. Diversity is taken to mean the presence of underrepresented groups from all backgrounds, life experiences, and beliefs. Inclusion is the act of ensuring that all individuals are equally recognised and respected, and are judged only on their contributions to the organisation. D&I is thus a situation in which underrepresented groups are not only present, but accorded the respect and recognition they deserve. This paper is based on in-depth interviews with over a dozen figures in the hedge fund industry around the world who have pioneered new approaches to D&I. It is also informed by research into how firms large and small have promoted D&I. Simon Ruddick, Chairman of Albourne Partners, on D&I in the Hedge Fund Industry Diversity is about the composition of the workforce. Based on the definitions we’ve seen from the investors we work with, diversity typically focuses on women and minority groups, including ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ individuals, veterans and persons with disabilities. There are many other elements of diversity, such as socioeconomic background, educational background, religion, and age. However, these are not elements of diversity that we’ve typically seen investors focused on. Inclusion is present when underrepresented groups within an organisation feel valued, respected and empowered to fully participate and share their views. Simply put, diversity is about composition and inclusion is about culture. We believe that diverse teams lead to better decision making, as a diverse team leads to cognitive diversity. A homogenous team presents a source of risk, which is the risk of groupthink. Another way to frame this is that in portfolio construction, we all understand the benefits of diversification: adding assets that have a low correlation to other assets in the portfolio lowers the overall risk of the portfolio. In team construction, if you have a diverse team, you'll add orthogonal perspectives into the mix, which lowers the risk of groupthink and increases the chances that you’ll catch your blind spots. Albourne’s Role As a consultant, our role in promoting D&I is to collect D&I information (via establishing a standardised due diligence questionnaire), validate that information (via our operational due diligence—ODD—process), and through that process lead managers to reflect on their D&I profiles. We've encouraged managers to self-classify as minority/women-own business enterprises (MWBE) since 2012 via MoatSpace (Albourne’s portal for fund managers to enter their data). We have over 60 investment due diligence analysts meeting with managers, and when they meet with managers who they understand are MWBE managers, they ask the managers to self-classify. We canvass service providers (like cap intro groups who maintain lists of MWBE managers) so we can aggregate this. Clients currently have the ability to search for MWBE funds on the Albourne client web portal. The existing MoatSpace questionnaire is narrow in scope in that it only applies to women and minorities who are US citizens, as the MWBE definition used by some of the institutional investors we referenced when we built the questionnaire limited the definition of MWBE managers this way. A challenge is what the definition of MWBE is: is it based on ownership or on the senior risk-taker? So it was important that we revamp our original MWBE questionnaire, so that it's more comprehensive. We're also partnering with AIMA to produce a questionnaire inspired by the one used by the Institutional Limited Partners Association that can be used across the alternatives industry. This will include ownership and workforce diversity statistics, as well as policies and practices on D&I issues such as family leave, anti-harassment, retention, and recruitment. The other aspect that we're rolling out is the new ESG and Manager and Employment Practices section in our ODD report, which will focus on the validation of anti-harassment, equal pay and diversity policies and initiatives. Within the next 12 months, through our over 80-person ODD team, we expect that we will have captured D&I information in our ODD reports on over 1,000 funds. Based on the work we've done so far, managers want feedback and guidance on D&I. Similar to how managers want to align themselves with industry best practices on ODD, managers are eager to learn how they can align themselves with best practices on D&I. We are still in the early stages of capturing more information on D&I. Managers should be capturing data and measuring the diversity of their organisation. They should also establish D&I policies and practices. Anti-harassment and equal pay policies should be in place. An important aspect of due diligence on this topic is that D&I policies may be in place but what practices are actually being implemented? D&I is one of the high priority initiatives within our Investor Manifesto II, which is a document we published that includes 50 initiatives we're advocating for across the alternatives industry. D&I is not just a company policy. It is who we want to be. Please see the attached full paper for more details.

Hedge fund managers have heard the message regarding the diversity and inclusivity composition of their employee force directly from their institutional investors, investment consultants said. "There's a business case for managers because many institutional investors have adopted the concept that diverse teams lead to better decision making. A homogeneous team represents a source of risk — group think," said Tathata "Ta" Lohachitkul, partner and portfolio analyst, based in the San Francisco office of alternative investment consultant Albourne Partners Ltd. "Many investors … have expressed the perspective that a diverse team leads to cognitive diversity, which leads to better investment outcomes," Ms. Lohachitkul added.