Katarina Melvan is Branch Manager at BNY Mellon Germany and also Head of Asset Servicing Germany. She talks to us about what the financial sector can do to get young women in particular more interested in finance. In a different interview she explains the background to the custody and asset servicing business.
Mrs Melvan, we've already talked about BNY Mellon's asset servicing business, today we're going to talk about diversity. What diversity and inclusion (D&I) issues are you tackling at BNY Mellon?
We have a variety of D&I programmes, such as our Women Initiative Network (WIN). This is a network within our bank and has around 7,700 members worldwide. It was founded in New York in 2009 by our former President Karen Peetz. In Germany, we are celebrating the 10th anniversary of our WIN chapter this year. This is about mentoring, coaching, training, campaigns in the context of International Women's Day, and so on.
We have also implemented global minimum standards, such as parental leave of 16 weeks with full pay. Or a global guideline for carers' leave: 10 days per year for care within the family. And that as a bank with 53,200 employees!
Are there specific targets for the individual areas in terms of D&I?
Yes, we have implemented various processes to ensure equal pay, with regular reviews. We are also committed externally to driving forward the increase in the proportion of women. For example, we are a signatory to the HM Treasury Women in Finance Charter. This commits us to increasing the proportion of women in EMEA senior management to 33% by the end of 2025. At 32.5%, we are currently just below this target.
We also have certain business guidelines: for example, many of our business units will no longer take part in a panel discussion if only men are represented there.
Is the achievement of targets relevant to bonuses or remuneration?
Yes, they are!
BNY Mellon also published a Study on "women and investing" . What are the key findings of this study?
That women invest much less than men. There are reasons for this: a) The approach. In the fund and asset management industry, the approach is very much focussed on male clients. 90% of respondents admit to having had a male client in mind. Very masculine language is also used: Terms from extreme sports or high-performance sports, where men are more likely to be found. And then there is the topic of financial jargon: women tend to be repelled by this, while it gives men the feeling of belonging to an exclusive club. The marketing approach must therefore change if we want to reach women better.
The study also found that women believe they need to earn a lot before they can invest. This varied from country to country. We interviewed 8,000 women and men from 16 countries for the study, as well as 100 asset managers.
How much money do women think they need to be able to invest?
Women believe that they need a salary of 50,000 dollars p.a. before they can invest. This is of course a myth. The fact is that if you had invested 30 euros a month in the S&P index over the last 10 years, you would have a portfolio of 8,000 euros today, having only paid in 3,600 euros
Many women believe that investing in the stock market is too risky. The fact is that there are also defensive shares and that the risk can be diversified via funds. So there needs to be more education so that people can correctly categorise the risks.
The bottom line of the study is that if women could be persuaded to invest at the same rate as men, USD 3.2 trillion in additional wealth would be available worldwide.
It is also interesting to note that women, like men, want to generate returns. But the majority of women also want to do good with their money - for the planet, society and their family. Women are therefore particularly interested in responsible investing. More women as investors - and in the financial sector in general - could therefore help to raise moral standards in our industry.
What do you hope to achieve in your organisation if there is progress in the D&I area?
We are convinced that diverse teams bring better results for the bank.
What do you base that on?
By pursuing D&I in recruitment, we can find other talents. For example, we have a great colleague who has been with us for over 5 years. She moved to Germany from abroad and a headhunter told her that the candidate had three disadvantages: a) she was a woman, b) she was not German, c) she was a single mum. We hired her. In the meantime, she has outperformed many others and is now in charge of an important area at our company. We are very glad that she applied to us back then and didn't listen to the headhunter's inadequate comments.
That shows: If you don't have any blind spots when hiring, you can find even more great talent. In our industry, there aren't really any language barriers as long as you can speak English.
What is currently the biggest obstacle for women in the financial sector? It can't be the training...
We don't reach enough young women. You have to reach them while they are still in training or studying. Once they've made up their minds, it's more difficult to win them back. The larger the pool of young women who want to make a career in our industry, the more women can end up in management positions. We want to remain active here and become even more active.
What can the industry do?
Those women who are already in management positions should serve as role models for young women. We need to inspire young women about our industry and the opportunities, because they are simply fantastic: you can earn good money, the industry is international and you can have a wonderful career if you want to.
We should also address very young women. For example, we have been running a coaching programme in Germany since 2021, together with the organisation "Junior": Student female coaching. This programme involves female students in Year 11 who receive coaching from our female managers and can exchange ideas. In this way, we show these young women career prospects early on in their development and get them excited about our industry.
What should the industry as a whole do to get more women into management positions at financial companies?
We should orientate all our marketing more towards women. The approach should be suitable for women. In particular, we should inspire young talent for the industry at a very early stage. That sounds simple: We should orientate our approach and marketing more towards women. But first there has to be a realisation!
We are trying to bring the entire industry on board. For example, we held an event in Frankfurt on 25 September 2023 together with DWS, Fidelity International, Deka, HansaInvest and Fondsfrauen. There was a panel discussion and a networking dinner to raise awareness of the needs of women in the industry.
Many thanks for the great insights and commitment!
Anke Dembowski is a financial journalist and author of various investment fund-related and other financial books. She is also a co-founder of the "Fondsfrauen" network.