Zions Bank, Commonwealth Financial Network and T. Rowe Price have launched programs they say could help boost Black representation across wealth management and related fields — if they're adopted by other firms.
What the efforts share in common, according to executives who spoke at this week's Association of African American Financial Advisors (Quad-A) Vision conference in Atlanta, is buy-in from white financial advisors and executives. Because fewer than 5% of
Sui Lang Panoke, Zions' senior vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion; Scarlett Abraham Clarke, Commonwealth's chief diversity officer; and Raymone Jackson, T. Rowe's global head of diversity and inclusion; shared some details of their respective firms' programs with attendees at Quad-A's conference in a session about the path ahead for the industry. For Zions, a regional bank based in Salt Lake City that also offers wealth management services, the trail includes starting a book club asking the firm's executives to have individual "deep-dive conversations" with Panoke and a community leader each month on a rotating basis, she said.
To demonstrate that the word "diversity" means different perspectives and backgrounds of all types, Panoke chose conservative industrialist Charles Koch's
"I wanted to find a program that would engage and entice our white executives, and what do they do in their free time? They read books on leadership, on the industry, self-help," Panoke said. "Sometimes the best thing you can do for Black employees is educate white employees, right? They're forced to read the content and be exposed to different points of view. That is what will resolve the biases that we have."
Commonwealth, a Waltham, Massachusetts-based wealth manager that generated
"Unfortunately, the internship program historically relied very much on referrals, so you can imagine who was being referred for those opportunities," she said. "Our internship program has been key in order to not only socialize the fact that you can have a career in this space, but also to understand from a financial literacy perspective, what you should be thinking about at a very young age."
T. Rowe, a Baltimore-based investment manager with more than $1.3 trillion in client assets, has added diversity and inclusion components to its sales meetings with potential customers over the past year and a half, Jackson said. The company made the change after noticing the level of interest by prospective clients in working with "a firm that mirrors our values" and has "a diverse portfolio management team," Jackson said. He recently attended a "finals meeting" to close a new client relationship spanning $250 million in assets.
"It really was a trigger for us to say, one, let's make sure that our actions line up with our words and, two, let's make sure that our leaders understand what we're doing and can carry that message forward," Jackson said. "You can bring in revenue or you can lose revenue on account of what you're doing in this space. So DEI and ESG really are bringing in revenue."
Panelists described the progress as one positive byproduct of the trauma and social unrest in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Many wealth managers and other financial firms made pledges to hire and retain more Black advisors and employees,
In doing so, members can count on growing support for boosting representation of Black advisors and other minority professionals among their clients, Panoke said. If companies fail to follow the customers' preferences, their "purchasing power is going to shift" toward competitors, she said.
"Consumer behavior right now is driving a lot of these DEI initiatives in the corporate sector," Panoke added. "Sadly, so many lives have been compromised, a lot of sacrifices have been made and lives have been lost in order for us to get to this place. But I feel like we're at an opportune time in the corporate arena to really shift and move the needle on this."
