The number of women and minorities occupying a spot at the C-suite level make up just a tiny fraction of the U.S. asset-management industry, including hedge funds, mutual fund companies, private equity and real estate firms worth US$71.4 trillion in assets combined, according to a report from Miami-based Knight Foundation published on Wednesday.
Specifically, of the US$47 trillion in assets that mutual fund firms manage, the report finds that women and minorities oversee just 5.2% and 3.8% of all mutual funds, respectively. That translates to about 0.9% of total assets under management (AUM) for women and 0.3% of total AUM for minorities, based on data from the first quarter in 2011 up to the second quarter in 2016.
Still, the report notes that women- and minority-owned firms — those who have at least a 25% stake — in the mutual fund business are slowly increasing their share of AUM, although minorities have since seen a decline in this trend.
Even as “diverse managers” keep pace or outperform the benchmarks, the report notes that these underrepresented groups are still struggling to gain a larger foothold across the industry.
Specifically, the report finds that although 24% of women-managed hedge funds and 28% of minority-managed hedge funds “exhibit top-quartile returns” on average, women and minorities control just 4.3% and 8% of hedge funds, respectively.
Women- and minority-run firms tend to be smaller in size, the report notes, partly explaining why they remain underrepresented. Still, women, in particular, may face an implicit bias that discourages investors from entrusting them with their assets, the report notes.
Specifically, the report cites a study in which participants were instructed to invest 100 units between two funds listed on the S&P 500 composite index, each managed presumably by a man and a woman. With just the name hinting at the manager’s gender, the experiment found that the female manager attracted far fewer inflows than their male counterpart.
“Despite the fact that they are just as good as generating returns for their investors, female managers see significantly lower inflows into their funds,” the report notes. “Experimental evidence suggests that implicit bias on the part of investors may partially explain the reluctance to invest with female-managed mutual funds.”
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