Manulife Financial Corp. is setting targets to boost leadership roles for Black, Indigenous and people of color across its North American businesses by 2025.
The Canadian life insurer plans to increase representation from those minorities in leadership roles by 30 per cent over the next five years and recruit at least 25 per cent from that group each year for its graduate program, the firm said in a statement Friday.
“We recognize how important it is to improve the diversity of our organization at all levels,” Chief Executive Officer Roy Gori said in the release. “Establishing goals not only demonstrates our commitment to this important work, it will help us build a more inclusive culture to drive innovation and enable us to better serve our customers.”
Manulife is the latest Canadian financial services firm to agree to new targets to increase diversity among its leadership, following moves by companies including Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto-Dominion Bank and Bank of Montreal.
Manulife’s home city of Toronto has a population that’s more than 50 per cent foreign-born, but there’s little diversity in the upper echelons of its financial firms.
At Canada’s Big Six banks and two large life insurers, 10 per cent of top executive roles and 8 per cent of non-executive board positions are held by visible minorities, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Manulife also signed on to the BlackNorth Initiative pledge in Canada, which has a goal of increasing the number of Blacks on boards and in executive roles, as well as the CEO Action for Diversity and Inclusion pledge in the U.S.
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