Three organisations, with Europe helping shape the conversation
Asset managers are accustomed to preparing for change. But some of the most consequential changes are happening close to home: clients are becoming more diverse, millions of Europeans are taking greater responsibility for their retirement savings, and artificial intelligence is changing roles and the skills required to perform them.
Inclusion is therefore not a conversation running alongside the business. It is part of how asset managers understand change and respond to it.
That was the central message of the first Inclusion in Finance Global Annual Event, held in London on 12 June 2026 and hosted by DWS. For the first time, Inclusion in Finance Europe (IiFE), Inclusion in Finance UK and Nicsa’s Inclusion in Finance North America gathered as one global community.
The objective is not to make every region the same. It is to combine global reach with local knowledge and share successful approaches in ways that reflect different cultures, regulations and market structures. Each organisation brings experience shaped by its own region, creating opportunities to learn from one another without imposing a single model.
For IiFE, the central question was clear: how can Europe build an asset-management industry equipped for the people it will employ and serve next?
Strategy, pensions and talent
Europe at an inflection point
The first global panel brought together the chairs of the three regional organisations. Representing Europe, Ric van Weelden explained how IiFE brings 11 asset managers together to learn across organisational and national boundaries, then translate shared insight into locally relevant action.
That collaboration is becoming more important as changes to pension provision in markets such as Germany and the Netherlands move asset managers closer to individual savers. Firms must engage people with different levels of financial knowledge, different working lives and different expectations.
“The industry has to reflect the people that it serves.”
Ric van Weelden · Chair, Inclusion in Finance Europe
For Ric, these changes create a defining opportunity for Inclusion in Finance Europe. Inclusion is no longer separate from business strategy. It is becoming part of how European asset managers understand their clients, design products and build teams.
The pension system meets Maria
Raymond Sagayam, Managing Partner at Pictet Group, Co-CEO of Pictet Asset Management and a member of the IiFE Advisory Council, began “Europe’s Pension Revolution and the Inclusion Imperative” with a hypothetical person.
Take Maria, a 71-year-old living in Naples on a state pension of €820 per month. Her late husband received €1,500, and she has outlived him by 12 years. Maria illustrates the consequences of pension systems designed around a continuous, full-time career of about 40 years—typically that of a man with largely uninterrupted earnings and contributions.
“Maria isn’t the exception. She is the system working exactly as it was designed.”
Raymond Sagayam · Pictet Group and Pictet Asset Management
Many careers now include childcare, care for older relatives, part-time work and career breaks. At the same time, the move from defined benefit towards defined contribution gives individuals greater responsibility for retirement outcomes, even though only 18% of European citizens own a personal pension product.
Eurostat
Eurostat 2022 · EUROPOP projection
McKinsey
McKinsey: 8.1% versus 2.7%
Raymond asked asset managers to treat this as a product-design and client-understanding challenge, leaving the audience with three actions:
- Audit every product launched over the next 12 months. Does it help close the gender pension gap or widen it?
- Bring the issue into conversations with boards, clients, colleagues and families.
- Design for a 30-year career rather than assuming an uninterrupted 40-year one.
The audience voted Raymond’s proposal the Dragons’ Den idea most likely to have an impact on inclusion in the industry.
Building the industry Europe needs
Asmus Tvede Madsen, Strategic People Expert at Nordea Asset Management and an IiFE board member, presented Rise Across, IiFE’s pan-European, cross-company mentoring programme. It connects professionals with experienced people from other asset managers, countries and functions to expand networks, introduce new perspectives and support career development.
The pilot focuses on women and includes experienced professionals as well as people earlier in their careers. Its cross-company model gives participants access to relationships and perspectives that may be difficult to find within their own organisations.
Rise Across shows how IiFE can turn a shared talent challenge into practical infrastructure for the wider European industry.
Different experiences, better decisions
The event’s lightning talks brought inclusion to a personal level. Richard Ernesti, Ex Managing Director and Senior Client Executive at Citi, described the energy he had once spent editing his identity. Derek Power, Global Head of Equities Management at Schroders, spoke about understanding his ADHD diagnosis later in life and the importance of recognising different ways of learning and processing information.
“Not every napkin needs to be folded the same. And neither do people.”
Richard Ernesti · Ex Managing Director, Senior Client Executive, Citi
The Cognitive Diversity Member Panel then considered how different expertise, experiences, perspectives and risk appetites can improve team decisions. Difference creates potential, but leaders must provide psychological safety and structure so that challenge is heard rather than suppressed. IiFE’s cognitive-diversity work helps teams understand how they think, identify missing perspectives and improve the way decisions are made.
From different perspectives to better decisions
Five shared global ambitions, locally applied
The three Inclusion in Finance organisations set out five shared ambitions for the next five years. They provide a common global direction while leaving room for local adaptation.
Developed by Inclusion in Finance UK, Pathway’s planned Frankfurt pilot shows how successful initiatives can travel across the wider Inclusion in Finance network. The established programme will be adapted to reflect the local needs of Frankfurt’s asset-management market.
For IiFE, the collaboration creates a wider pool of experience for members and a stronger platform for European asset managers to shape the global conversation. Progress can move faster when insight travels, programmes are shared and action remains grounded in the markets and people each organisation serves.
