Barriers to Entry: Diversity in Regulators

Regulators must address many roles and challenges. It is perhaps inevitable that people concentrate on their external, market-facing tasks, but there are equally difficult and pressing internal issues for them to address, whether regarding quality, focus or the effective marshalling of scarce resources, or diversity.

Diversity and inclusion are important and increasingly high-profile subjects for all organisations, regardless of sector. Regulators have unusually visible roles to play; they have a unique opportunity to embrace diversity for their own benefit and to have a much wider-reaching influence on the markets in which they act.

Understanding, embracing and increasing diversity is not an easy task. Saxton Bampfylde has been proud to work with many of the UK’s leading regulators to help address this challenge and has advised on over 75 senior appointments in the last three years.

We recently spoke to twelve economic and professional regulators on a ‘Chatham House rule’ basis, asking each about their diversity makeup, policies and strategies, as well as looking at published data more broadly. This short report gives an overview of the challenges people are facing and what they are finding most helpful in tackling those.

Download the report