Does your trustee board have a women problem?

Indeed, women are notoriously worse off on the savings front as well. A survey last year by provider Scottish Widows found only 40 per cent of women were making adequate pension contributions, compared with 49 per cent of men.

How can we claim that pensions are relevant to everyone if the generally held perception of trustees is [of] a group of middle-aged white men

Karen Partridge, AHC

With auto-enrolment bringing more women into saving and growing pressure from governance lobbies on gender diversity, trustee boards have been called upon to take the opportunity to redress the historical imbalance between male and female representatives.

Yesterday, the Financial Times reported that Helena Morrissey, chief executive at asset manager Newton, and a longstanding advocate of board diversity, will in her position as chair of the Investment Management Association overhaul the board to include more women.

The IMA’s board is now made up of 16 men and 2 women¹. So should trustee boards be considering similar reform?

Karen Partridge, head of client services at communications company AHC, said she has seen a “small but perceptible change” in the make-up of trustee boards. “Most boards I deal with now have at least one female member,” she said.  

But sadly, Partridge added that the only female trustees she knows are company-nominated, usually after a company-wide diversity initiative. 

She added that in a recent member-nominated trustee ballot that AHC ran for one its clients there were two women in the group of 16 nominees.

The nominees came 15th and 16th in the popular vote, and thus received none of the positions on offer. “This was an interesting statistic in a scheme where 53 per cent of the membership is female,” Partridge said.

Diverse boards not only better represent the make-up of the beneficiaries, they can also lead to more thorough discussions of issues affecting the scheme members.

Janice Turner, co-chair of the Association of Member Nominated Trustees, said: “Achieving [diversity] enables the board to have a better informed, deeper understanding of those on whose behalf they are managing the scheme.”

At this year’s National Association of Pension Funds’ investment conference, chair of Royal Mail Pension Trustees Joanna Matthews said: “One challenge less-diverse trustee boards have is that they [are there to] represent, which can create challenges over communication.

“Groups that all think the same way tend to get stuck in a rut.” The challenge was how to get "more women coming through the pipeline", said Matthews.

Career breaks due to motherhood is often cited as the reason women do not make it to corporate board level. However, the perception that pensions is a male-dominated area may also be to blame for the lack of female representation.

Partridge said: “How can we claim that pensions are relevant to everyone if the generally held perception of trustees is that they are a group of middle-aged white men?”

Turner said boards that are not achieving diversity should look at how they recruit trustees and consider how they can improve to get more diverse candidates, encouraging under-represented groups to put themselves forward.

“Simple, tried and trusted changes have included making it explicitly clear that applications would be welcome from women and minority ethnic candidates; including inclusive images on relevant literature,” she said.

¹The IMA updated its board membership online on September 4 2014.