The international news and analysis firm Citywire presents annual awards to fund companies that make progress when it comes to including more women in their fund management.

This year, SEB Investment Management received awards in the categories "Most improved gender representation for fund companies with 50-100 managers" and "Regional leaders - Europe". The company was also a finals candidate in the category "Best distribution of managed capital for companies with between 50-100 managers".

The data that Citywire presents shows that SEB Investment Management has a 28 per cent share of female fund managers. The average for the industry is 12 per cent.

A jury consisting of six people has appointed the winners after evaluating answers to a series of questions put to the respective nominated fund companies. Questions that dealt with everything from practices around gender equality and inclusion to how fund companies incorporate gender equality issues into their investment decisions.

”We are of course excited about these awards, although we accept them with a large portion of humility as we are well aware that there is still much to be done in this area, both for us and for the industry as a whole,” says Javiera Ragnartz , head of SEB's Investment Management division.

Ragnartz says that gender equality is an important issue for the bank, both regarding the recruitment of fund managers and when making investment decisions.

”For example, we offer the SEB Global Equal Opportunity Fund, which focuses on gender equality, but we also make sure to include the issues in larger parts of our administration. It is also an important issue in dialogues we have with companies in which we invest.”

Even if the trend is positive, there is much more that the fund company intends to do next year that can put further focus on the issue, for example recruiting more female managers, motivate and retain female managers and proactively work with cultural issues.

Read about SEB Global Equal Opportunity Fund (in Swedish)