Accountancy firms urged to promote diversity

Accountancy firms need to dramatically improve their equality and diversity practices to ensure that they attract more workers from ethnic minorities, a new poll reveals.

The study by magazine Accountancy Age found that, of 20 top firms surveyed, just 5.9 per cent of partners were from ethnic minority groups and the average percentage of female partners in the top 50 firms is just 9.7 per cent.

Of the big four accountancy firms, neither Deloitte nor E&Y provided the publication with diversity figures, while just two per cent of partners at PricewaterhouseCoopers are from ethnic minorities and four per cent at KPMG.

The percentage of partners in accountancy firms from ethnic minorities has risen from four per cent three years ago to 5.9 per cent today, but this still only represents one in 15 partners and is well below the 7.9 per cent employment rate for ethnic minority workers in the UK.

Although the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) claims that the accountancy industry has a better record for diversity than some others, it claims that more still needs to be done to improve the current situation.

A spokeswoman for the CRE pointed out that many accountancy firms recruit from top UK universities, which traditionally have lower numbers of ethnic minority graduates, while smaller firms are sometimes exclusively Asian, which raises the sector average.

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Date:07/06/2007 12:32:59