The Cornwall Pension Fund is amongst the first set of signatories, representing £1.08 trillion in assets under management, to declare support for a new Diversity Charter to tackle a lack of diversity across the fund management industry.

The Charter has been devised by some of the largest pension schemes in the UK, forming a group called the Asset Owner Diversity Working Group, Co-chaired by Helen Price, Brunel Pension Partnership and David Hickey, Lothian Pension Fund.

According to the charter, fund management suffers from a severe lack of diversity.

The Diversity Charter offers a toolkit for analysing how asset managers are performing on diversity and inclusion – and where they can improve.

By signing up to the Asset Owner Diversity Charter, signatories are committing to take account of diversity and inclusion records from fund managers when choosing new partners.

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Diversity questions will form part of the overall assessment scores for each bidder, meaning fund managers wanting to work with these clients will have to disclose information and demonstrate real devotion on how they are tackling diversity and inclusion within their workforce.

Signatories also commit to including diversity as part of ongoing manager monitoring, a questionnaire will be provided to managers annually for completion.

The group says one of its key aims was to create standardisation in order to improve disclosure.

The charter questionnaire has been developed to be progressive and equip signatories to hold firms to account for ongoing progress.

It goes beyond asking about the strategic approach, to identify how managers look at diversity and inclusion across five key areas; industry perception, recruitment, culture, promotion and leadership.

The charter is live on the diversity project website and can be accessed here: diversityproject.com/assetownerdiversitycharter