DAMI Applauds NYC MWBE Report and Plans to Expand Emerging Manager Programs

Washington, D.C. - New York City Comptroller Brad Lander recently announced the release of the office’s second annual accounting of its work with emerging and MWBE asset management and financial services firms. The report showed systems assets managed by diverse-owned firms increased from 11.65% to 12.86% during the last year.  The report also announced an expansion of its emerging manager investment programs with a goal of having 15% of their U.S.-based actively managed investment assets with minority- or women-owned asset managers by 2025 and 20% of assets with diverse-owned firms by 2029. 

Robert Raben, executive director and founder of the Diverse Asset Managers Initiative (DAMI) -- an effort to bolster racial and gender representation in the asset managers industry -- issued the following statement in response:

“We appreciate the New York City Comptroller Lander’s recent MWBE report for providing detailed and extensive data. The numbers aren’t where we’d like them to be–the majority of New York City residents are women or people of color–but this is a stake in the ground.  Transparency in reporting is crucial for diversity and performance, and this is very strong reporting. Cities should follow New York City’s lead first in measuring the data, and committing to more minority and women owned firms.   Diversity benefits the performance of your investment portfolios, which is at the end of the day the point.” 

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The Diverse Asset Managers Initiative is an effort to increase the absolute number of, and assets under management by, diverse-owned asset management firms for institutional investors, with specific focus on public, corporate, faith and labor union pension funds as well as foundation and university endowments.