October 20th Institutional Diversity & Inclusion Summit to Highlight State of D&I in Institutional Investment, Next Steps

ATLANTA, Oct. 11, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- eVestment, a part of Nasdaq and a global leader in institutional investment data and analytics, has teamed up with the Institutional Investing Diversity Cooperative (IIDC), a consortium of investors and investment consultants, to host an Institutional D&I Summit.

During the virtual summit, institutional asset managers will learn how top consultants and other allocators factor D&I data into manager research, advise investors on D&I and use D&I data in manager evaluations. Sessions are designed to give managers insight into the growing demand for D&I data and an understanding of how that data is used. The summit is set for Wednesday, October 20 from 10 a.m. to noon Eastern Daylight/New York Time.

Featured speakers will include representatives from investment consultants Verus, Mercer, NEPC, Callan and FEG; management consultant McKinsey & Company; the investment and wealth management platform LPL; the OCIO SEI; and The Diversity Project UK.

Institutional asset owners such as pensions, foundations, endowments, family offices and sovereign wealth funds represent diverse stakeholders who increasingly want to know that the asset managers who invest on their behalf demonstrate organizational commitments to diversity and inclusion.

Institutional investors and their consultants increasingly want to factor D&I considerations into how they evaluate managers, said summit moderator Michele Shauf with eVestment. They understand that, as an industry, asset management has considerable opportunity to improve diversity, so theyre keen to benchmark where managers are today and understand what firms are doing programmatically to increase D&I. Managers that fail to include any D&I responses in their database profiles could be disadvantaged.

eVestment and the IIDC have been at the forefront of standardizing the collection of D&I data, both to give institutional asset owners and consultants access to better data and to make it easier for managers to provide that data. In January, eVestment launched an updated D&I questionnaire in consultation with the IIDC to give managers the opportunity to describe D&I policies and programs at the firm level and to share demographic breakdowns of individual portfolio teams as they are able.

In June eVestment made this D&I data available to investors free of charge in an effort to improve transparency on the topic in the investment business. To view the entire eVestment D&I questionnaire, please click here.

Knowing where we are on diversity in the industry and how those trends are moving is the key to making the kind of progress the industry is looking for, said Shelly Heier, President of Verus, which is a member firm of the IIDC. Getting this data is crucial to understanding where we are now, where progress is being made, where there is still work to be done and which asset managers are really stepping up. This is a topic that isnt going away.

The Institutional D&I Summit is open to asset managers and hedge funds who want to learn more about the demand for D&I data and how investors and consultants use it. For more information on speakers, the agenda and on registering, please visit https://www.evestment.com/events/di-summit/#.
Representatives from the media are also welcome to attend the virtual summit. For registrants who are unable to make the live event, a replay will be available online through October 22.

About the Institutional Investing Diversity Cooperative

The Institutional Investing Diversity Cooperative is a collection of institutional plan sponsors and some of the largest and most prominent institutional investment consultants in the industry today. The members of the cooperative are responsible for the stewardship of more than $32 trillion in assets held by institutions in retirement plans, employee health funds, endowments, foundations, operating funds and capital reserves, among others.

About eVestment

eVestment, a part of Nasdaq, provides institutional investment data, analytics and market intelligence covering public and private markets. Asset managers and general partners reach the institutional marketplace through our platform, while institutional investors and consultants rely on eVestment for manager due diligence, selection and monitoring. eVestment brings transparency and efficiency to the global institutional market, equipping managers, investors and consultants to make data-driven decisions, deploy their resources more productively and ultimately realize better outcomes.

Press Contact
Mark Scott
mscott@evestment.com
678 238 0761