Suzanne Williams-Charles: Bermuda has done a pretty good job of progress with women in leadership positions. We have a long way to go, to have a fully represented, diverse workforce from a leadership perspective, but many of your organisations have had some successes. Perhaps you could share successes, barriers, and what it felt like in your organisations as far as what they’ve done to change the culture with respect to diversity.

Kirsten Beasley: It’s interesting in Bermuda because we have an extra dimension of diversity to contend with, often the elephant in the room: the dynamic between expats and Bermudians.

Our small size on Bermuda is an advantage but it can also create some unique inequities between Bermudians and non-Bermudians; particularly at the intersection of how we work and how we socialise.

When you’re a Bermudian, your social circle is typically separate from your professional circle. When you’re an expat, your social circle and your professional circle are more likely to have greater overlap, driven by the need to create a sense of community and family when you move to a new community.

I understand this, and I don’t knock it, but we have to acknowledge the potential creation of a networking/relationship disadvantage to Bermudians who aren’t socialising as often with industry leaders outside of work.

We have to address the uneven impact that can have on access and progression within our industry.

Randolph Simons: Think of all the golf clubs. It comes down to how we are assimilating expats. Do they view their role on this Island as being a part of this community, or are they just part of the company? Do they understand this culture when they come to the Island? Providing the insight as to things that have happened historically here and what it means to the average Bermudian is a good way forward.

Nicholas West: We ran sessions this year for staff on the history of Bermuda from Emancipation to Desegregation that were run by Yesha Townsend and Kristin White. The interest and following were very encouraging. That was very gratifying to see, and it wasn’t just our Bermudian employees wanting to learn more, but many of our expatriates wanting to better understand the history and culture of the community they have joined.

Patrick Tannock: When I started in the industry over 30 years ago, I experienced racism in that there were perceptions that people who looked like me or who came from backgrounds like mine were lazy and didn’t have the mental aptitude to even participate in IB.

We have worked very hard, sometimes twice as hard, to dispel those perceptions but the DEI numbers don’t lie, and the reality is that we have quite a way to go.

It’s a very delicate balance in IB in terms of the dynamics between local and international talent and how it has evolved over the decades. It’s a complex relationship.

In IB we will always have some internationals, some of whom have made significant contributions to Bermuda, and I believe an infusion of fresh intellectual capital is healthy and increases prospects for innovation, which has been one of the hallmarks of Bermuda’s success.

Bermuda must ensure that it uses its competitive advantage of speed to market to provide real-time solutions to the challenges and opportunities that come from change. This can be done by ensuring that we can easily attract diverse fresh high quality intellectual capital while continuing and increasing our commitment to attract, retain and develop local diverse intellectual capital to ensure a win/win to drive innovation.

To achieve this objective, we must agree on a common set of facts including dealing with the elephant in the room which is the lack of diversity of people of colour in middle management and the executive suite. We shouldn’t be content to focus just on women and say we now have diversity. We must hold each other to a higher standard of accountability.

We must be willing to have frank conversations about the issues that matter and particularly impact the pace of DEI in Bermuda. The impact of technology is profound and companies are becoming less labour intensive—we haven’t even talked about artificial intelligence or the impact it will have on everything.

We are at an interesting inflection point and if we are going to successfully navigate our way through to real diversity, honest dialogue will be required with all relevant stakeholders.

Bill Wharton: My perspective is a bit different because I came to Bermuda as a black man so I didn’t fit into the expat community. I kept quiet about where I came from, and I slid right into the Bermudian community.

West: International assignments in Bermuda tend to have much longer tenure than you find elsewhere. I’ve been involved with international assignments for many years and typically they’re two years or three years. Bermuda is an exception in that we have 10-year, 15-year expatriates.

It is also important to acknowledge that Bermuda is very expensive to recruit in. You can hire one person in Bermuda—for the same cost you can potentially hire two in other locations. That investment decision is a complicated one to make. Hiring people in Bermuda is no longer just because you’re in Bermuda—companies are globally connected now, and location is less important for certain types of roles.

Beasley: One of the significant advantages of Bermuda, where we have made progress, is that we’re much further down the road in terms of having these conversations around DEI. As much as we feel that we haven’t made progress and that progress isn’t very fast, we’re further down the road than some other jurisdictions and areas of the world.

West: While I think we have progressed the conversation around race in Bermuda further than in other locations, there are other aspects of diversity that are more difficult to discuss here.

Williams-Charles: From an action perspective, we talk about it and everybody knows what the problem is, right? So what are we going to do? What can we do to move the dial?

Beasley: It’s advocacy, and industry’s engagement. There are many great organisations in Bermuda designed to help create support networks and education, to hold industry to account and to help us work with governments to hold them to account for the environment we operate in.

There is a symbiosis between what the government decides and the battles it chooses to pick and where our industry chooses to operate. Advocacy has to be relentless, and that partnership between all the stakeholders is vital.

Hayley Johnston: Organisations could or should be more cooperative. I feel if the industry is more collaborative it would be more meaningful and have more gravitas and more impact rather than pockets of doing their own thing. More collaboration would be more effective.

Tannock: We must do a better job tracking the data on DEI demographics to transition from awareness and conversations to tangible actions with real metrics because if we can track the data, we will see that there has been some progress. Tracking the data will also identify where there is a shortage or under-representation of people of colour and women.

Tracking the data will allow executive management to hold people accountable to ensure that they walk the walk and are committed to doing the right thing for the right reasons.

Otherwise, the Bermuda market will lose ground in the war to attract the diverse talent that’s pivotal to us retaining and growing our position as an IB domicile of choice.

West: I would take it one step further. You talk about looking at the interns: all the interns, all the scholarships—how many of those have translated into working in our industry? And the ones who aren’t, why not? Are we supporting them, are we following up with them?

Simons: A lot of companies are making an effort to start tracking these graduates, where they are starting once they’ve graduated. I know a couple of instances where jobs are being offered to these students before they graduate. It is happening. That may help the momentum to move faster over the next couple of years.

One of the interesting things that I would challenge a lot of companies to start thinking about is removing some of the historic definitions of what makes someone eligible for a particular role. You don’t have to hire unicorns to fill positions.

Caines: Yes, we want diverse pools of people coming in. We need to work on our cultures in our organisations. We want different people coming in and the diversity of thought, but then they’re coming into unhealthy environments.

The first thing I would challenge companies to do is to work on their culture. Yes, we want everyone to be their most authentic selves when they come to work, but are they being welcomed when we come to work?

The second thing we need to do is move the dial forward on how we hold leadership teams accountable.

We have to quantify where we are today in organisations based on race, sexuality, age, and gender—the whole gamut of diversity, Bermudians and non-Bermudians. That is a massive pillar of diversity here.

If the dial isn’t moving, how can we hold companies accountable actually to make that change?

Tannock: At AXA XL Bermuda we know exactly what our numbers are as we have been tracking these statistics and metrics due to initiatives that we implemented over the last several years. Some of those initiatives have resulted in the allocation of resources to fund chapters with a specific focus on increasing awareness and a culture of inclusion for under-represented groups in areas such as race, gender equality, disabilities, etc.

We are continuing to review the structure and content of our job descriptions to ensure that they demonstrate diversity and that there are no inadvertent biases.

As I mentioned previously, at AXA XL we have a policy to ensure that when it comes to recruitment that the slate of candidates interviewed is diverse and representative of the Bermuda market. Adherence to this policy is reflected in our Bermuda insurance recruitment numbers with women making up close to 90 percent of new hires; more than 70 percent are women of colour.

I have been consistent in stating that you can’t just hire a bunch of diverse people and expect a payoff. As leaders we must acknowledge and understand that supporting diverse talent within a company is just as important, if not more, than the initial efforts to attract the talent. Conscious mentorship and sponsorship will be vital to increasing DEI at all levels.

That diverse talent must be made to feel welcome and included in order to reach their potential. At AXA XL we don’t focus only on attracting diverse talent, we believe in developing and promoting that talent. In our Bermuda insurance operations during the first six months of 2022 more than 60 percent of the people promoted have been women and close to 40 percent have been women of colour.

With environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) issues becoming such an important metric, the pressure is on to do something meaningful to move the needle on DEI sooner rather than later.

In the international arena of global standards and metrics, where our clients/customers have multiple options, there is rarely, if ever, the option to be selective as to what we can and cannot embrace.

Although time will tell, I am concerned about the potential implications of Bermuda’s position on same-sex marriage as to our ability to attract and retain the brightest and best diverse high quality intellectual capital and how that might impact us as an attractive IB domicile of choice.

Beasley: The ban on same-sex marriage creates a competitive disadvantage and risks reputational damage. We stand ready to be accused of hypocrisy (or “rainbow-washing”) if we fly the rainbow flag in our windows at the same time that we’re silent on Bermuda’s stance as it relates to same-sex marriage.

We have to do more than just make social media statements and decorate windows.

West: A growing trend is disclosure of diversity statistics and policies, as well as social and corporate governance practices. I spend a lot of my time working on this because it is important to our investors. While we spend a lot of time raising awareness, tracking metrics and reviewing them is key.

Every year for the last several years, we look at our annual compensation review. Who’s being promoted? What is the gender pay gap? Are we closing this? How are we doing on our new hires? Are we making things better with our actions?

Tannock: As I said earlier, the world is rapidly evolving as ESG, global standards and the fact that DEI enhances a company’s ability to achieve better results are all tangible factors that provide real ammunition to change mindsets and urgently galvanise action.

Executive leadership with a real sense of urgency must lead the drive to change attitudes and the behaviour of organisations as to why diversity matters and champion the implementation of a culture of equity within their companies.

West: The momentum is building right now. The world is tired of the amount of polarisation in society, around social justice, but we have to keep going. This is the time where we can start gathering that momentum and making real action.

Wharton: Martin Luther King was tired. He did not stop marching.

Tannock: Although as members of this industry, but more importantly citizens of the world, we all have a duty to drive DEI forward to generate solutions for our clients, and ultimately for the world today, tomorrow and in years to come, people in positions of leadership and influence need to start putting their money where their mouths are. If they truly care about DEI, then make it happen!