“I had a conversation with a woman … in the finance sector who is a managing director at one organization, running a desk,” van Biesen said. “Her husband is a director, which is lower, at another organization, not running a desk. Same business. And he’s paid more than she is.”

The ongoing pay disparity is depressing, but van Biesen, who in January was appointed president and CEO of what was formerly known as Women in Capital Markets, focuses on possibility.

“I am in this role because I am an optimistic person,” she said. “And I do believe in the power of this sector to make change.”

Furthermore, the financial services sector has a “tremendous opportunity” to enact change, she said, “because we see this huge wealth shift” toward women, given factors such as longevity and divorce.

Van Biesen brings plenty of relevant experience as Women in Capital Markets rebrands to VersaFi and continues promoting inclusion in the finance sector. Before joining the organization, she was managing partner, board and CEO succession, with global consultancy Korn Ferry, where she advised on leadership decisions and advocated for inclusion.

Prior to that, she served in executive roles in both the Canadian and global arms of Catalyst, a non-profit focused on the advancement of women and underrepresented groups in the workplace. And a decade and a half ago, she established the diversity practice for global leadership consultancy Spencer Stuart’s Canadian financial services practice, with a focus on women on boards.

“I do this work because the finance sector is critical to this economy,” van Biesen said. “I want to see women fully represented in the most critical part of our economy, because that’s where all the important decisions are being made.”

Securing the corporate ladder

Representation requires a strong pipeline of talent, and women have increasingly entered the sector. “The intake valve — we’ve really addressed that,” van Biesen said, noting that institutions now hire female graduates as often as they do male. On this front, VersaFi’s offerings include skills building; professional development programming, including for students; coaching and mentoring; and networking.

In addition to acquiring skills, van Biesen suggests women surround themselves with the right people: “Seek out great organizations, great mentors, great sponsors and, to the extent that you can, great bosses.”

She also encourages risk-taking as a path to growth. When women mistakenly assess themselves as underqualified, “we’re doing ourselves a disservice,” she said.

But women doing their part to be great hires is only one part of the equation. Organizations must create a system that supports women’s growth and development, van Biesen said: “Too often, we see women who are put into situations that we affectionately call the glass cliff” — a do-or-die job without the support to succeed.

An organization that supports success, she said, systemically accommodates career breaks for caregiving, which many women will require at some point. It’s also transparent about pay and creates gender-balanced teams, which signal to women — both financial advisors and clients — that the firm values the richness that results from diversity of talent, she said: “There are a lot of these interventions that we can look at.”

However, she said persistence is key in addressing gender and pay disparities because “the minute you take your eye off that ball, you’re going to roll backwards.”

Fixing the broken rung

VersaFi aims to address what’s been coined “the broken rung”: after seven to 10 years of career success, women begin leaving at a disproportionately higher rate than men. And when women don’t advance mid-career, they don’t reach the top of the ladder. “We are stalled in progress at the executive level,” van Biesen said.

She made clear that women don’t leave simply because they’re starting families, but because they don’t feel valued at this stage of their careers. They may see no advancement opportunities, or believe taking leave will mean losing clients. “If we could take a marathon view versus a sprint view, and create … bridges so that we can smooth these things out, we would make huge progress,” she said. For example, a team approach to advising clients allows clients to feel connected to more than one team member, she said.

Cultural challenges must also be addressed, van Biesen said: “There’s a lot of still inappropriate exclusionary behaviour that happens in the brokerage business, in the advisory business … that we’re not addressing.” For example, traditional ways of entertaining clients — sports events on weekends, say — don’t create opportunity to “bring more people into the fold.”

Women clients can similarly feel like outsiders whose concerns won’t be acknowledged or addressed. Once, when van Biesen found herself listening to an investment pitch as she and her husband sat across the table from an all-male advisory team, she thought, “I’m not buying.”

But her optimism persists: “Canadian financial services is innovative and can make change and address these issues.”

For example, large firms are improving their parental leave policies and programs, she noted, with 25 having signed VersaFi’s Parental Leave Pledge as of March 27. The pledge includes promising to provide paid leave, communicating leave policies clearly and analyzing leave-related data.

“In wealth advisory, they’re trying to take a hard look at how they can create these on- and off-ramps for their women wealth advisors,” she said. “That takes really intentional leadership from management.”

Industry firms that have signed the pledge include Aviso Wealth Inc., Canaccord Genuity Corp., Desjardins Group, IG Wealth Management, Investment Planning Counsel, Manulife Financial Corp., Raymond James Ltd. and Bank of Nova Scotia.

Leading the climb

Innovation is also afoot at VersaFi, which rebranded on June 4.

“The industry has changed a lot since 1995,” when the organization was founded, van Biesen said. “This name [VersaFi] is a reflection of the diversity and the dynamism of the industry and the women within it.”

While the organization always represented women of diverse backgrounds, “we are going to be much more clear about that going forward,” she said.

VersaFi will “support and advocate for women and gender-diverse individuals in finance from all backgrounds,” a release said, and will focus on the buy side, sell side and fintech.

Van Biesen said her vision is to “be a much bigger voice in the equity conversation in the finance sector across the country.” That means talking about the broken rung phenomenon, bringing more research to the conversation, and ensuring leaders and organizations walk their talk, she said.

She tells the story of a financial services professional — a woman — in the throes of a stressful workday. It’s the kind of day when you feel as though you’re failing at the job, failing at your personal life and may as well throw in the towel.

But the boss says it’s going to be OK; that this too will pass. He wants you to stay, he says, because you have a great future.

“This is leadership,” van Biesen said. “Diversity, inclusion, equity — we call it all these things. But it is fundamentally about good leadership.”

This article appears in the June issue of Investment Executive. Subscribe to the print edition, read the digital edition or read the articles online.

Iceland consistently ranks as the most gender-equal country in the world, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap report. The “land of fire and ice” also has an abundance of renewable energy, with almost 100 per cent of energy consumed by the country coming from renewable sources such as geothermal energy.

But even countries that are in relatively good shape on gender and climate still need to tap the ESG bond markets, as Iceland’s minister of finance and economic affairs, Sigurður Ingi Jóhannsson, told The Banker. 

He was visiting the London Stock Exchange on May 31 where he opened the day’s trading to mark the occasion of Iceland’s inaugural green bond valued at €750mn, which it issued back in March under the country’s sustainable financing framework. The green bond attracted a record 280 investors, the biggest interest shown from investors in an Icelandic transaction, according to the Icelandic government.

Green, social and blue bonds can be issued by Iceland’s treasury through the framework, which it published in 2021, and updated last year. Jóhannsson spoke to The Banker about the country’s sustainable financing framework and its plans for future issuances, including a gender bond. 

The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Q: Why did Iceland issue its first green bond earlier this year?

A: Iceland has worked on its sustainable financing framework and we have used the last few years to consider the latest news and developments on green bonds and how the market is responding. The sustainable financing framework that we were working on in 2021 was a little bit delayed initially due to a general election in Iceland and the Covid-19 pandemic. So you have to choose when you think is a good time to issue a green bond, and that time for us was now.

Being a very green country, it is also like a statement: We want to live up to our image. We started with a green bond because we aim to be carbon neutral by 2040 and totally get rid of fossil fuels by 2050. The bond will help finance the transition in Iceland. 

We have already done a lot in the past few decades — with 84 per cent of energy coming from renewables — but there are still a lot of things to invest in, such as roads, the maritime industry, green buildings and adaptation to climate change. We are looking to get funding on all of these areas within the framework. 

The green bond was welcomed by the market; there were over 270 investors taking part such as central banks and official institutes, bank treasuries, insurance companies and other institutional investors, mainly from northern Europe. The final issuance size was nine times what was initially offered — we have never seen anything like that. We also had broader investors than we have had before. It’s a high-quality investor group and the majority tend to hold it to maturity, so there’s actually more demand for it than supply. Proceeds from the bond issuance in March are for finance expenditures from 2024-2026. 

From northern Europe’s perspective, the green bond showed that the Icelandic economy is strong and that everything we are doing inside of the sustainability framework is good. The market is looking forward to what we are going to do next. 

Q: Does Iceland have plans to issue more bonds, and if so, what type?

A: There won’t be another green bond this year, but we don’t know about the future. We are also exploring gender bonds; that is our next step. Even though we are at the forefront [of gender equality], we want to lead by example. By doing this, we could encourage other countries to do the same.

Gender bonds will clearly help us in co-operation with other countries [such as support for other countries as they look to improve gender equality], but we will also find some interesting projects domestically in Iceland because even though we are at the top in terms of gender, we still do not have total gender equality.

But being at the forefront of gender equality for many years helps us in a positive way to gain more credibility with gender bonds because we have a story to tell about it. We anticipate a lot of investor interest when we issue a gender bond. [Jóhannsson gave no indication as to when a gender bond is likely to be issued.]

Blue bonds are also in our sustainability framework, so they are a possibility for the future. We are quite lucky with the sustainable fisheries policy that we have had for a few decades, which is probably the most efficient in the world, and means our oceans are still quite clean.

Q: What challenges does Iceland face when it comes to the energy transition?

A: The biggest transition challenges we face are in [the] road transport and maritime [industries]. We have done a lot in terms of electrification of cars. Last year, the majority of imported cars were electric cars. The challenge is more in heavier vehicles and maritime transport, even though they have succeeded in replacing the use of fossil fuels, almost by 43 per cent in the last 10 to 15 years.

For heavier vehicles and maritime transport, the biggest challenge is the lack of an alternative energy source: it could be hydrogen or ammonia. We have to invest in these alternative energy sources in Iceland, as well as in other countries producing them, because there will be much more demand in the next decade than we will be able to produce domestically. Green bonds can help fund the production of those energy sources. As a small nation, if we are able to produce hydrogen, for instance, for the maritime industry or for heavy vehicles, even for aeroplanes in the future, we could also export it to other countries.

We are on track to achieve carbon neutrality by 2040, but investment in the next few years is critical, and not only investments by the government, but also by municipalities and companies. I cannot not say with 100 per cent certainty that we will succeed. But without this goal, we will certainly not get there.

Developing the sustainability framework was also about gaining the verification and certification that what we are doing meets expectations, and that the policies we are working on, both environmentally and economically, point in the same direction. We are on a clear path to invest more in the green and just transition, which is where a gender bond could help.

Adopting a long-term approach to investing is a great way to meet your future financial goals, whether that is saving for your kids’ college tuition or your own retirement.

While it may seem like you need to move fast to take advantage of the stock market’s ups and downs, as it turns out, “long-term stock investments tend to outperform shorter-term trades by investors attempting to time the market,” said Investopedia. Further, “investing long term cuts down on costs and allows you to compound any earnings you receive from dividends.”