Despite the name change, VersaFi's new CEO Tanya van Biesen says the non-profit’s core mission remains the same, tapping 'the power of the finance sector to drive equity for women.'Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
Women in Capital Markets, a leading organization for promoting and advancing women’s careers on Bay Street, is rebranding after nearly three decades to become VersaFi – a nod to a broader mandate beyond traditional finance.
Historically, WCM focused on fields such as equity research as well as corporate and investment banking. Under its new brand, set to launch Tuesday, and new chief executive, Tanya van Biesen, VersaFi will add the likes of financial technology firms to its scope.
The new name has a dual meaning: “Versa” signals the diversity and complexity of the finance sector, as well as the women in it, and “Fi” references the financial industry. However, the non-profit’s core mission remains the same, tapping “the power of the finance sector to drive equity for women,” Ms. van Biesen said in an interview.
For nearly three decades, WCM has worked to accelerate gender diversity in capital markets, and its efforts have centred on three pillars: building a talent pipeline, research and advocacy. The organization currently has nearly 4,200 members and is well-known on Bay Street, but Ms. van Biesen is particularly keen on ensuring the financial-services sector does not lose mid-career women.
“Where we still have work to do is retaining women,” she said.
While there has been progress in attracting and hiring women in junior roles, senior leadership positions in capital markets are still predominately held by men. Many women still struggle when they hit their 30s, trying to juggle child care and aging parents.
While this is a common trend across industries, it can be more acutely felt in capital markets because the client and the markets are often expected to come first. To this day, it is still taboo to miss the 7:15 a.m. morning meeting – even if you are up all night with a sick kid.
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To help retain women, WCM has long run a program known as Return to Bay Street for those who previously held mid-level and senior positions in finance, but took time away from their careers. More than 100 women have used the program since 2010, but their success rates have varied.
Over time, the program morphed into shorter placements, often only a few months, and that made it harder for women to reintegrate and to prove themselves. To fix this, VersaFi now requires participating employers to offer a minimum of six months of work.
There can also be a stigma attached to these positions, as well as to women who are hired into junior roles. On Bay Street, there is a term for such hires: “wiccums,” which is a play on the WCM acronym. Sometimes it is used to describe a dominant woman – even though the same is less likely to be said about a man – and other times it is used to suggest a woman was a token hire to fill diversity quotas.
“We still see a lot of cultural issues,” Ms. van Biesen said.
An initiative that VersaFi promotes to eradicate one such issue is its parental leave pledge. In 2021, the organization’s research found that 82 per cent of men said an unsupportive work culture was a barrier to taking a parental leave, and 100 per cent of them said “traditional restrictive gender stereotypes” were a barrier. In other words, men feel a client and the potential fees are expected to come first, not the baby.
Organizations that sign the pledge commit to providing paid leave – salary top-ups on employment insurance payments – to all parents, including fathers and non-birth parents. They also commit to fostering a work culture that normalizes and embraces parental leaves for all parents, across all ranks and positions, including top leadership.