Drawing the lines to defend DEI

Over the last few weeks it has been a great privilege, and a time-consuming challenge, to review hundreds of entries for the Women in Insurance Awards. The stories are frequently inspiring, often deeply moving and a reminder that in every walk of life women face many barriers to achieving their full potential.

Now in their seventh year, the Women in Insurance Awards are firmly established as the biggest celebration of the achievements of women in the insurance industry. This year they also feel like a bulwark against the growing assault on diversity and inclusion from the ignorant, prejudiced forces of darkness on the far right. 

Led by Donald Trump, their determination to destroy the hard-won progress of decades has cowed businesses into retreating from lofty promises to embrace Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and deliver lasting change. This corporate cowardice comes as no surprise, as it follows hard on the abandonment by most of the world’s largest financial institutions of commitments to tackle climate change. This started with spurious claims from Republican states that co-ordinated action through initiatives such as the Net Zero Insurance Alliance breached competition law. This was a smoke-screen for climate-change denial, now given further credibility by Trump. No fight, no backbone, just meek submission was the depressing response of most business previously quick to align themselves with the net zero initiatives launched by Mark Carney at COP26,.

Now that contagion of cowardice is infecting corporate responses to the far right’s attacks on DEI. So far, the rush for the exit door does not seem as panicky as it has been over climate change but it is still happening. Bold statements about DEI policies are being watered down or disappearing from company websites. Collectively, executives are taking a lower profiles, although there are many exceptions. In the public sector in the UK, local councils that fell into the grubby hands of Reform in May are purging DEI policies.

In this context, the huge support for the Women in Insurance Awards seems like an act of defiance: a determination to say 1000s in the market believe in diversity and inclusion and understand the great value it delivers. 

It is not the only sign that many are drawing a clear line in the sand. Insurance Post’s relaunch of its Diversity and Inclusion in Insurance Awards will seek out those committed to the wider DEI agenda, We will watch carefully those business that support the awards, as well as those conspicuous by their absence. There is a growing list of organisations and networks in the UK insurance market committed to promoting DEI: they deserve support as this is a cause we cannot abandon.

When the winners of the Women in Insurance Awards are revealed at Grosvenor House on 23 October it will a great celebration: it will also be an expression of solidarity in these darker times.

If you doubt the darkness of the clouds that are depending all around us, just pause to reflect on the conversations the insurance and financial services sector was having just two years ago about climate change, ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) and DEI. Would you have imagined where we are today?