The Personal Finance Society is working on producing guidance on diversity and inclusion programmes for Financial Planners.

The PFS is working on the guidance as its latest poll revealed Financial Planning firms are split over the purpose and benefit of diversity and inclusion programmes.

Just under a quarter (24%) of Financial Planners polled by the PFS in August said the main aim of their diversity and inclusion policy was to improve workplace culture.

However, the same number said they believed the main purpose was to ensure diversity was respected and employees were treated equally regardless of race, gender, sex, health, ethnic or social origin, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion or culture.

Attracting and retaining talent was the main aim of diversity and inclusion policies at 13% of PFS member firms polled.

Only 2% of the firms polled said the main goal of their policy was to increase customer diversity.

Sarah Lord, president of the PFS, said: “When an impactful approach to diversity and inclusion is at the heart of a Financial Planning firm, the regulator has been clear that they usually also find positive outcomes in risk management, good conduct, healthy working cultures and innovation too.

“The Financial Planning profession has made strides forward in recent years, but we are still on a journey. I firmly believe further progress can be best achieved by sharing the challenges we face as well as how we are going above and beyond legal requirements to boost employee and client wellbeing with our work.

“The Personal Finance Society will work with the CII Group to share good practice guidance in the coming months.”

In 2019 the CII (of which the PFS is part) introduced a new requirement for all Chartered firms to have a diversity and inclusion policy in place.

In April and May this year the CII surveyed 328 Chartered firms to measure the impact policies have and identify good practice.

The PFS added that it will use the findings of the survey and the social media poll to “share good practice guidance on what Financial Planning professionals can do to take strides forward to becoming more diverse and inclusive” in the coming months.