Only 14% of fund managers worldwide are women — which is the same as in 2000, according to research on 34 markets by Morningstar, ahead of International Women’s Day on 8 March.
However, the proportion is much higher in Singapore (29%), followed by China, Hong Kong and Taiwan (28%), than in the more traditional fund management centres of the US (11%) and the UK (13%).
“Asia leads the world in gender diversity of fund managers. Women have been named fund managers at a relatively higher rate in places in the Greater China and Singapore,” said Wing Chan, director of manager research practice, EMEA & Asia.
The pace of change is especially evident in Hong Kong, where 23.5% of fund managers in 2014 were women and only 16.7% in 2009.
The representation of women in the fast-developing funds industry in China is also significant, according to Rachel Wang, the firm’s director of manager research practice, China.
“From a demographic perspective, China has a relatively high labor force participation rate for women, and the majority of students in higher education institutions are female. Against this backdrop, we would naturally expect more women working in the fund industry, which has a relatively high education entry requirement,” she said.
The research highlighted a dozen US mutual funds managed by women which have been awarded Morningstar forward-looking analyst ratings of Bronze or better as evidence that “the gender of fund managers doesn’t affect investment performance”.
Moreover, there were seven women fund managers whose products were chosen by a panel of fund selectors as the best funds across various categories in FSA‘s 2019 Hong Kong and Singapore Awards.
These included Joanna Kwok (JP Morgan Asia Growth), Louisa Lo (Schroder ISF Emerging Asia), June Chua (Harvest Asia Frontier Equity), Eve Tournier (Pimco GIS Diversified Income), Martina Turner (Quaero Capital Accessible Clean Energy), Rosemary Simmonds (Barings Europe Select Trust), and Pheona Tsang, whose BEA Union Investment Asian Bond and Currency Fund was the last decade’s best performing fixed income product sold in Hong Kong/Singapore.
Female fund managers in selected markets
| Country |
2019-end |
2014-end |
2009-end |
| China |
28% |
N/A |
N/A |
| Hong Kong |
28% |
23.5% |
16.7% |
| Japan |
13% |
N/A |
N/A |
| Malaysia |
23% |
N/A |
N/A |
| Singapore |
29% |
28.0% |
25.4% |
| South Korea |
23% |
N/A |
N/A |
| Spain |
23% |
26.0% |
22.1% |
| Taiwan |
28% |
N/A |
N/A |
| United Kingdom |
13% |
13.4% |
12.7% |
| United States |
11% |
9.7% |
10.9% |
Source: Morningstar
The latest report comes three years after Morningstar published a paper that examined the gender balance in the fund management industry. It found “discouraging trends”, which (Asia aside) seem to be little changed today.
Key findings included that about one in five funds had at least one manager who is a woman, a figure that had not improved since the global financial crisis of 2008.
Moreover, countries with large financial centres have lower proportions of women fund managers than many smaller markets, but women have better chances of running funds in areas of industry growth — passive, funds of funds, and team-managed funds, the paper said. Likewise, it appeared more difficult for women to win management roles in the more established parts of the fund industry — actively managed funds and solo-managed funds.
Finally, according to the firm’s research, in some asset classes women fund managers had better credentials than men, yet were still broadly underrepresented in fund portfolio manager ranks.
