For at least three years, Fidelity Investments had been working to improve diversity at their branches, Kathleen Murphy, head of the personal investing unit, said in an interview with Bloomberg.
Murphy is also charged with overseeing zero-free index funds that Fidelity introduced in August, an industry first. "This year, half of the new hires in our branches are women, and that's in an industry where less than 25% of licensed professionals are women," Murphy said. "That required a talk with a lot of male managers about how we hire and how you interview and who you gravitate towards."
In Fidelity's Leap program, which is focused on young technologists, half of the new participants are women, Murphy added. "What will attract more women? Flexibility," she noted. "We really don't care when someone comes to work and when they leave, as long as they're doing their job."
To deal with sexual harassment at the firm, CEO Abigail Johnson said they sought outside help with discussions. "Men and women see the facts the same way," Johnson said. "But how they feel about the facts is often very different"