DFPI Economic Equity Conference releases diversity survey results

State Issues DFPI Diversity

On April 21, California’s Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) hosted its first “Economic Equity Conference” presenting its Survey of Diversity in State Banking. The conference was designed to provide state financial leaders with strategies to enhance their “diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and consider their role in helping to close the racial wealth gap.” The conference featured the release of findings from a banking survey distributed to every state-chartered bank and credit union in October 2020. Some key takeaways of the report include:

• Responding financial institutions reported collecting employee and board member data on the following: (i) “60 percent collect ethnic and/or gender data;” (ii) “roughly 40 percent inquire about veteran/disability status”; (iii) “about 15 percent ask about ‘other’ categories, including marital status and age”; and  (iv) “only 3 percent collect data on sexual orientation.”
• About half of responding financial institutions require diversity education or training for employees, but only 23 percent require diversity training for board members.
• Around 40 percent of financial institutions have “board-approved diversity, equity, and inclusion goals, with purposeful recruiting being the most common.”
• About 33 percent of responding institutions “track diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, with reliance on self-assessment tools being the most common.”
• More than 75 percent of survey respondents “would like the DFPI to support diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts by providing education and training to licensees.”