Are firms developing talent in too narrow a circle?
Asset management is built on the search for insight. Firms combine data, experience and different interpretations to reach better investment and business decisions. Yet when it comes to developing people, the industry often relies on a much narrower pool of perspective: the managers, sponsors and informal networks available inside one organisation.
Internal mentoring remains valuable. It helps people understand their firm, navigate its culture and build relationships close to their work. But it also operates within the assumptions, hierarchy and business model of that firm. The people best placed to challenge an individual’s thinking may sit elsewhere in the industry.
Rise Across, Inclusion in Finance Europe’s cross-company and cross-country mentorship programme, is designed to widen that circle. Its first cohort was launched on 20 May 2026, connecting female professionals across European asset management with mentors from different firms, markets, functions and career stages.
Asmus Tvede Madsen, IiFE’s Gender Equality Community Lead, explained that the programme was created to make the Community’s ambition tangible for member firms and their people. Rise Across was deliberately designed as more than another internal mentoring scheme: it reaches across organisations and borders, includes female professionals at different career levels and spans the breadth of roles within asset management.
The programme reflects a wider business proposition. Inclusion and cognitive diversity can strengthen decisions, culture, client outcomes, talent and long-term performance. Cross-company mentoring translates that proposition into individual development by giving people access to experience they may not encounter within their immediate working environment.
The opportunity is not simply to create more mentoring. It is to make mentoring a channel through which knowledge, confidence and professional networks travel across the industry.
Ric van Weelden, Chair of Inclusion in Finance Europe, placed the phrase “cross-pollination” in a specific context. He explained that the value comes from matching people across organisational and geographic boundaries, exposing participants to perspectives shaped by different firms and business models.
Difference can be a development asset
The pilot demonstrates what becomes possible when difference is treated as part of the design rather than a barrier to overcome.
Every match brings together people from different member firms, with at least one shared language and different levels of industry experience. The process also considered development priorities, personality, area of work and preferred meeting frequency.
The matching process deliberately combined difference with common ground. Pairs had to come from different member firms, share at least one language and have different levels of industry experience. The process then considered focus areas, personality, area of work, preferred meeting frequency and overlapping interests or goals.
Careers in asset management are shaped by more than technical ability. They are also shaped by exposure.
Careers depend on more than technical capability
As Nigel Cresswell explained during the kickoff, mentoring can build capability, confidence and judgement about oneself, other people and how to operate effectively. His experience also showed how guidance can help someone navigate an unfamiliar professional environment without losing their sense of self.
The mentee leads the process by making first contact, scheduling meetings, setting an agenda and defining development goals. Curiosity is central, and the mentee retains ownership of their development and the choices that follow.
The mentor contributes as a knowledge sharer, storyteller, adviser, cheerleader and discussion partner. The role includes sharing relevant experience, offering constructive feedback and challenge, and helping the mentee find their own answers rather than prescribing them.
Development should not produce a “watered-down” professional
Nigel Cresswell, CEO and Managing Partner of Quoniam and Executive Sponsor of the community, described how mentoring helped him address a challenge that is common but rarely discussed openly. Early in his career, he lacked confidence, felt that he did not belong and tried to perform an image of what he believed a professional should be.
Mentoring helped him separate two questions that are often confused: how can someone adapt effectively to a professional situation, and how can they do so without losing the qualities that make them themselves?
A senior female colleague helped him work through that tension. Later mentors supported him through a new investment-sales environment, unfamiliar expectations and periods of pressure. Their value did not come from comfortable reassurance. It came from enough trust for honesty and enough challenge for course correction.
The insight is particularly relevant to inclusion. Development should not mean teaching people to reproduce one established model of leadership. It should help them become more effective while retaining the qualities, experiences and perspectives for which they were hired.
Good mentoring needs ownership and structure
The kickoff made clear that a match is only the beginning. Mentees are responsible for initiating contact and agreeing expectations with their mentors, including meeting frequency, topics and development goals.
The platform gives pairs prompts and practical tools for moving the relationship forward. Participants can record goals, monitor progress and draw on suggested discussion topics. Yet the guidance is deliberately flexible. A mentoring relationship should respond to the people in it, not become a checklist completed for its own sake.
Rise Across uses the MentorCliQ platform to support goals, milestones, development-hour tracking and access to learning resources. Participants were also encouraged to adapt the suggested discussions when different topics would better serve their goals and working relationship.
From individual development to collective advantage
The first Rise Across cohort is a pilot, and that matters. Its 44 pairs will generate insight not only for the people involved, but also for the future design of cross-firm talent development across the IiFE network.
The immediate measure of success will be the quality of the relationships: whether participants establish trust, hold useful conversations and make progress against goals that matter to them. The longer-term opportunity is wider. Each pair can expand a network, transfer knowledge across organisational boundaries and make different routes through asset management more visible.
This is a collective talent question. No firm holds all the experience, perspective or answers that its people may need. An industry seeking stronger leadership pipelines, more balanced progression and better decision-making cannot rely only on the networks people happen to inherit.
Can firms collaborate while competing for talent?
The cross-firm model creates a legitimate tension. Participating asset managers collaborate on development while continuing to compete for talent. Broader networks may make external opportunities more visible.
Yet limiting exposure is unlikely to be a sustainable retention strategy. A stronger response is to create the culture, opportunity and career pathways that make talented people want to stay.
Editorial clarification: recruitment and talent mobility were not directly discussed during the Rise Across kickoff. This is an IiFE editorial question raised by the programme model, not a conclusion attributed to a speaker.
The programme therefore raises a broader question for the sector: if asset managers benefit from exchanging insight across markets and disciplines, why should the development of their people remain confined to organisational boundaries?
Rise Across begins with 44 matches
Its real potential lies in the conversations, decisions and professional connections that follow. Participants will develop their mentoring relationships through autumn 2026, followed by an evaluation designed to identify what worked and how future cohorts can build on the experience.
