NAA Summit Furthers Latino Inclusion in Financial Services

"It is imperative that we identify opportunities for progress as well as to recognize our wins, both of which will be accomplished at the Summit," Avila says. "The Summit will address critical issues facing the American Latino business community, including access to corporate and pension fund boards, greater allocation of private equity funding by major institutional investors, and investment in education and mentoring for American Latino students and entrepreneurs."

While significant progress has been made since the NAA's inception, and a greater number of Latinos are not only availing themselves of financial services but are also entering the financial services industry as professionals, there is still a lot of ground to be covered.

"We're in a different world now but the issues are still pretty much the same," says Enrique Cortez, chief spokesperson for the NAA.

Perception – by both the financial services industry and the media – is perhaps one of the greatest challenges that the NAA has to contend with. There's still a lot of misunderstanding among Wall Street firms and Fortune 500 companies, for instance, about the Hispanic community, and a lack of knowledge as to the fact that there is wealth in the community, Cortez says. Continued efforts to change that deep-rooted perception (a session at the Summit will, in fact, be dedicated to Latinos in the media) is paramount, he says, in order to progress further and enable higher participation of Latino financial services firms in the institutional investor space; increased Latino control of capital and access to capital markets and the increased influence of Latinos in public and private financial institutions as well as on Fortune 1000 boards of directors.