Driving Innovation through Inclusion

When we think about our diversity and inclusion agenda, it is driven by the belief that it will lead to us to make better decisions, deliver better client solutions, live our valued behaviours, and embody the bank’s brand promise, “Here for good”. Crucially, we think that it will also enable our teams to unlock innovation.

This is always important; it’s how we keep up with, and hopefully get ahead of, our clients’ needs. In the current environment, with banks and emerging fintechs competing and collaborating to deliver the best financial services, one might argue that innovation in banking and finance is happening more rapidly than ever before.

According to the Harvard Business Review [1], studies show that “well-managed diverse groups outperform homogeneous ones and are more committed, have higher collective intelligence, and are better at making decisions and solving problems”. 

Research [2] has shown that businesses and economies with greater female participation and gender diversity perform better, and have a more diverse set of skills available to address today’s business challenges. Organisations that rate highly for both diversity and inclusiveness outperform others, and studies have revealed that they:

• are 45% more likely to improve market share
• are twice as likely to meet or exceed financial targets
• experience a 57% increase customer satisfaction
• are six times more likely to be innovative and agile
• experience a 69% improvement in brand image

We’re progressing gradually in third-party measures – the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index for five years in a row; the Equileap gender equality report; the Thomson Reuters D&I Index; and the HERoes Women Role Model Lists 2019. And we have set internal targets – committing that women will occupy 30% of our population of Managing Directors and one down from Managing Directors by the end of this year (we’re currently at 28%). Meanwhile our Fair Pay Charter, launched in 2018, is a public declaration of 10 principles which guide performance and reward decision-making globally, for all colleagues. This includes equal pay checks and gender pay gap reporting.  

These and other operational building blocks are helping us to propel our gender diversity agenda in the right direction. I am deeply indebted to my colleagues on the Global D&I Council, which we established in January 2018, for their tireless work to ensure that this is a business priority with leadership and sponsorship commitment from senior management.  

Standard Chartered’s Futuremakers programme, which we launched in 2018 to address economic inequality in our markets through education, employability and entrepreneurship, is giving girls the tools to shape their own future. This has an incredible multiplier effect on communities and helps empower the next gen of innovators and entrepreneurs in some of our dynamic markets in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Looking through an investment lens, the recent Women’s Livelihood Bond demonstrated the impact we can have from a product perspective. 

In our industry, we see that while the graduate intake may often be 50/50, we wind up with as a few as 10% of women in some segments.

Considering the need for constant innovation and measured, bias-free thinking, it seems obvious to me that we will create better client solutions with a more diverse talent pool. 

In day-to-day life, this means things like assigning high level projects to a mix of people, to ensuring that everyone’s views are heard in a meeting: it’s harder for women to get their innovative ideas into the open if they are being interrupted by male colleagues all the time.

Far from singling out women, this year’s IWD theme of #EachforEqual is a call to accelerate gender parity, promote greater inclusion, and remember that #EveryMoment is an opportunity to empower women.

Follow our Standard Chartered CCIB page to join in the #IWD2020 conversations.

[1] https://hbr.org/2019/11/how-the-best-bosses-interrupt-bias-on-their-teams

[2] Sources for research: PWC, Female Millennials in financial services: Strategies for a new era of talent, May 2015; PWC, Next Generation Diversity: Developing tomorrow’s female leaders; McKinsey, The business of empowering women, 2010; Credit Suisse Research, The CS Gender 3000: Women in Senior Management

Source for studies: Corporate Leadership Council and Centre for Talent Innovation (2014), Deloitte (2016), McKinsey (2018)