Diversity, equity and inclusion

We work in partnership with organisations that educate and support us to progress our DEI ambitions. We are continually learning, and our partnerships provide up to date advice focused on maximising the impact we can make for our colleagues, and in turn, clients and communities.

They help us connect with diverse talent, assess our progress and plan for the future, with a focus on intersectionality for the greatest impact.

Our external partnerships link closely with our internal community groups. These groups provide social and support spaces for their communities, celebrating our people, opening up conversation and supporting day-to-day inclusion, to help make sure every voice is heard. Each group has a partner sponsor to support their progress.

Our external partnerships also provide benchmarking and accreditations that help us understand where we are and what we need to do next. We choose not to pursue every accreditation every year, so we can focus time and energy on feedback, learning and progress, not just updated badges. 

Diversity of identity brings diversity of experience and contributes to diverse thinking in our teams. As we continue to build an equitable and inclusive culture for our colleagues, we expect to see our workforce increasingly reflect the diversity of the UK working population and the clients we serve. 

Our representation ambitions help us understand where progress is happening and where barriers might still exist. They guide our efforts but don’t define them. DEI is ultimately about building a culture where everyone has equity of opportunity, not about meeting numbers. We set ten-year representation ambitions in 2019 and met them four years early for the whole firm. We now have new ambitions for the decade ahead, based on more recent UK population data.

Representation is not the goal in itself, but it’s a meaningful signal that our culture is enabling people from all backgrounds to thrive.

Ambitions by 2035 include:

• Increasing representation across focus areas of disability (including neurodiversity), gender, LGBTQ+, social progression and underrepresented ethnic groups to better reflect UK population in our office locations;
• Halve gender pay gap by 2029 from 2017 levels; publish data and action plans relating to ethnicity and disability pay gaps;
• Improve diversity of leadership representation and visible senior role models from different backgrounds to promote inclusion and belonging.

More information on our progress is reported annually in our Impact report.

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We look across all of the employee lifecycle from attraction, recruitment and induction to development and progression, to identify where barriers or biases may exist that can be alleviated to support our DEI progress. Examples of current and recent initiatives, including those based on feedback from our external DEI expert partners, are:

• Promoting accessibility standards for events, meetings and learning
• Refreshing inclusive recruitment (diverse candidate pools, reviewing role criteria, accessibility needs, internal recruitment)
• Refreshing DEI mandatory learning to understand lived experience and provide practical tips
• Supporting our leaders to be exemplary role models
• Strengthening race equity and leadership focus
• Building practical allyship capability
• Using intersectional insight to prioritise the actions with greatest impact
• Mentors supporting progression
• Strengthening sponsorship and feedback loops between community groups and senior leaders

Shaping a fairer pensions system - we set out practical proposals to make pensions more inclusive in The untapped potential of pensions and brought the debate into Parliament through an April 2025 roundtable at the House of Lords.

Tackling retirement adequacy - we launched a three-year adequacy project to give employers tools and strategies to improve outcomes for their people.

Addressing gender gaps in the LGPS - we contributed analysis and guidance on the gender pensions gap, including sector-first member insights and practical engagement steps, to help funds improve long term outcomes.

Partnerships and advocacy - we became signatories to the Asset Owner Diversity Charter (AODC) and amplified standards and accountability across investment through our podcast discussion with the AODC CoChair.

Navigating anti DEI headwinds - our Responsible Investment team set out actions investors can take to address the DEI backlash and align stewardship with expectations.