Ethics for Asset Managers?

At an event organized by Women in Asset Management North America for Infrastructure Week USA in May, several of us explored how we develop future Asset Management practitioners. And not just through formal college courses, but also engaging high school students in infrastructure.

With Lou Cripps of Talking Infrastructure and three leading women US Asset Managers – Amy Lindblom, Mildred Chua and Katty Fleming – we also included a draft ethics statement for discussion.

1. We are managing the assets on behalf of our communities as well as our organizations, not assets for their own sake, and certainly not for ours
2. We take responsibility for continuously developing the knowledge and skills to manage the assets well
3. We recognize our dependence on other skills and experience, especially from those people who work directly with the physical assets
4. Our communities and organizations depend on us to take the longer view, the bigger picture, the system-wide view, and to ask hard questions about the implications of what we decide to do and not do to the assets
5. We need to consider all the unintended costs and risks across time of decisions
6. This requires both honesty about past performance and our current processes, and the ability to understand what the data can (and cannot) tell us, through good analysis
7. We need, above all, to face honestly who benefits and who does not from our infrastructure decisions

What do you think? Would you sign?

NB I do not know why North America has so many preeminent women in thought leadership roles in Asset Management, I am just glad it does.