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* Diversity push slowed by patchy disclosure - activists
* Campaigners call for greater accountability on targets
* Top Black, Asian bankers accept duty of care to juniors
By Sinead Cruise and Elizabeth Howcroft
LONDON, Feb 3 (Reuters) - For many bankers, rising to
seniority cements their status as a company insider. Citi
executive Ireti Samuel-Ogbu never felt so out of place.
"I felt on the outside," said Nigerian-born Samuel-Ogbu, who
has worked at Citi for 32 years. "I only felt that when I became
senior because suddenly the fact there were so few people of
colour helping to lead the organisation was brought into stark
relief."
The world's biggest banks renewed pledges to improve
diversity within their predominantly white ranks last year,
after the death of George Floyd in police custody in the United
States in May sparked global protests about racism.
Many British-based banks had already signed the UK's
Business in the Community Race At Work Charter, which was
launched in 2018 and obliges employers to collect and publish
British staff diversity data, while others signed up in the
weeks after Floyd's death.
A Reuters review of 14 top banks, most of whom signed the
charter over a year ago, found eight had not yet published any
UK ethnic diversity data as of December 2020. Three others
disclosed limited information, while three published detailed
figures.
The charter does not specify any time limit, but company
insiders and equality campaigners said a lack of disclosure made
it difficult to measure progress in financial services, a $104
billion cash cow that has historically generated about 10% of UK
tax receipts and 3.5% of GDP.
"Action begins with recognising the starting point," said
Poppy Jaman, CEO of the City Mental Health Alliance, adding that
a dearth of diversity was causing significant stress for
minority employees.
"Good intentions are no longer enough, they've never been
enough."
Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs
, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse and
Bank of America all said they collected diversity data,
but declined to disclose it.
Citi and Societe Generale, which are not currently
signatories of the charter, also did not provide data. Citi said
it was collecting and intended to publish data while SocGen said
it was unable to collect this data under French law.
Some banks said their disclosures were contingent on staff
voluntarily declaring their ethnicity and that not enough people
had done so yet.
Sam Okafor, co-lead of NatWest's Racial Equality Taskforce,
said it was important that ethnic minority staff felt they could
be themselves at work. "We still have examples of people
changing their names to fit in," he added.
He stressed, though, that it was no easy task to redress
inequalities, and that rushing into goal-setting was not the
answer. Instead banks needed to take their time to understand
the challenges faced by employees.
For a FACTBOX with comments from all 14 banks about their
ethnic diversity policies, click here:
'BAME' CAN MASK DIFFERENCES
Three signatories - Barclays, NatWest Group
and Standard Chartered - did disclose overall figures
for "BAME", or Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic, staff numbers,
but did not fully break this down into constituent ethnic
groups.
While the charter does not specify what level of detail is
required, Sandra Kerr, race director at Business in the
Community, said the term BAME masked differences between ethnic
groups.
Most banks said they were working towards publishing more
granular data.
JPMorgan's EMEA chief executive, Indian-born Viswas
Raghavan, said life for minorities had improved during his
40-year career but the industry remained less productive than it
could be because too many people of colour felt they didn't
belong.
"When I started, I didn't really give any thought to the
fact that I had a brown face and whether it would lead to me
being treated differently, but that's not the experience for
everyone," he added.
"Society should hold the financial sector to account," he
said, adding that JPMorgan was striving to address disclosure
gaps and link management compensation with targets on racial
representation.
Three banks – Lloyds Banking Group, HSBC
and UBS – did fully break down BAME figures.
In HSBC's UK workforce, 2.4% of staff have self-identified
as Black, but among senior leaders this falls to 0.9%. At UBS,
2.9% of its total UK workforce have self-identified as Black
compared with 1.9% at senior levels. At Lloyds, 1.5% of UK staff
are Black, but among senior management this falls to 0.6%.
Black people make up 3.4% of Britain's working-age
population, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Half of the 14 banks surveyed did not disclose specific
racial diversity targets for their UK workforces.
Those that did largely focused on management. HSBC, for
example, aims to double the number of Black employees in senior
roles by 2025, while Standard Chartered targets 5% Black
representation in such roles by the same deadline.
A lack of Black staff in senior roles is a factor in a large
pay gap. Lloyds reported its ethnicity pay gap data in December,
based on figures from April 2020. It showed a 16.7% mean pay gap
between Black and white employees and a mean bonus gap of 52.9%.
The pay gap was more than double the Asian-white pay gap.
'MICRO-AGGRESSIONS' AT WORK
Ghanaian-born Bernard Mensah, president of international at
Bank of America, said his bank eventually aimed for full
disclosure on its diversity. He said he wanted to prevent young
people from minorities ending up in "professional cul-de-sacs".
"For some of them, yes, they're not getting the
opportunities because they are Black. But for others, this isn't
the case," Mensah said.
Samuel-Ogbu, who did not comment directly on Citi's data
disclosure, said the new conversation around race following the
Black Lives Matter protests gave her the chance to describe to
colleagues the discomfort she had felt as a Black person in
banking.
Now head of the bank's Nigeria business after years working
in London, Samuel-Ogbu recalled experiencing racism in the form
of "micro-aggressions" – subtle or unconscious remarks about how
she dressed or styled her hair, or jokes about racial
stereotypes.
"If you've never had to think about your colour, or be
treated in any other manner because of your colour, you're in a
position of privilege," she said.
Three minority financial-sector employees in their 20s, who
were interviewed by Reuters, echoed this concern. They asked not
to be named for fear of harming their careers.
One said he could go a whole month at work, and the only
Black person he'd speak to would be a cleaner or cook. Another,
a British-Nigerian bank employee, recalled trawling LinkedIn to
see if he could find people of his ethnicity who had "made it".
Two of the employees described the small percentage of
minority leaders as demotivating, saying they felt the small
number in senior decision-making roles could hinder the
diversity drive from making meaningful change.
A survey by NatWest in 2020 found that while 79% of all
staff agreed with the statement "all employees have the same
opportunity to advance in this organisation", only 50% of Asian
employees did, and just 28% of Black respondents.
"It's important we reassure this cohort that they should
give the City a go," said Mensah, referring to London's
financial sector. "Can you eliminate racism or bias in every
instance? No. But it's getting better."
($1 = 0.7281 pounds)
(Reporting by Sinead Cruise and Elizabeth Howcroft; Additional
reporting by Iain Withers; Editing by Pravin Char)
