BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Meketa Investment Group (Meketa), a global investment consulting and fiduciary management (OCIO) firm, today announced the launch of a new initiative to more thoroughly evaluate and rate asset managers’ efforts to ensure diversity and inclusion within their organizations. Meketa’s Annual Diversity & Inclusion Questionnaire will be sent to all public and private market managers within the firm’s internal database this month and will be included in all Request for Proposals and Due Diligence Questionnaires moving forward. Meketa will require all managers to complete this questionnaire on an annual basis thereafter.
“For many years, Meketa has been a market leader in evaluating and recommending diverse managers for a wide variety of institutional asset owners,” said Stephen McCourt, co-CEO, Meketa Investment Group. “While we are proud of these efforts and believe they continue to move the broader institutional investment industry toward equality, we also believe they are not enough. Therefore, we are implementing this new questionnaire and rating system to more fully encourage diversity and inclusion in all its forms, which we believe strengthens organizations and outcomes for clients.”
Through its work over many years with like-minded clients, Meketa has identified a series of best practices for organizations focused on improving diversity, equity, and inclusion. In this new effort, Meketa will hold asset managers accountable by evaluating them within the context of these practices – categorized under Transparency and Reporting, Policies and Initiatives, and Outcomes -- and the resources they have to effectuate them. The numerous practices on which an organization will be evaluated include:
- Committing to annual reporting of diversity statistics to clients, prospects, regulators, and consultants
- Establishing a diversity, equity, and inclusion corporate policy
- Committing to pay equity standards across an organization and establishing reasonable auditing processes to ensure pay equity
- Providing unconscious bias/diversity training and education for all employees
- Establishing recruiting and promotion processes that encourage the inclusion of diverse candidates
- Evaluating vendors, suppliers, and sub-contractors to ensure they share an organization’s diversity and inclusion values
- Committing to annually measuring diversity outcomes at all levels of an organization and across all departments and to improving those outcomes over time
“Many in the investment management industry have been positive actors in promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion within their organizations,” said Peter Woolley, co-CEO, Meketa Investment Group. “We believe it is time to encourage many more to join in advancing our industry toward a more equitable future for all. We view the diversity and inclusion best practices we have adopted as a framework for review and hope to see them enhanced and used to guide evaluation and decision making in the years ahead.”
In addition to launching its Annual Diversity & Inclusion Questionnaire initiative, Meketa is also among more than one dozen investment consulting firms and plan sponsors that have united to form the Institutional Investing Diversity Cooperative (IIDC). With a call to action for more robust data and a broader definition of diversity, IIDC members have issued a joint statement calling for increased transparency in disclosing diversity at asset management firms, not only at the senior leadership level, but also within investment teams. For more information regarding the IIDC, please visit https://www.iidcoop.org/.
About Meketa
Founded in 1978, Meketa is an employee-owned, full service investment consulting and advisory firm. As an independent fiduciary, the firm serves institutional investors in non-discretionary and discretionary capacities. Meketa’s collective client assets under advisement represent approximately $1.4 trillion. For more information, please visit www.meketa.com.
