Buoyed by the tangible business success of having made a targeted effort to cultivate a diverse workforce, New York Life is looking to up the ante even further, and this year, plans to hire 3,500 financial professionals, half of which will be women or individuals who represent different cultural markets.
There's nothing new about New York Life's focus on diversity, says Jane Conti, vice president of cultural markets at the firm, but having a truly diversified work force has become that much more important today than it was even last year, given the rapid changes in demographics and the evident influence, both political as well as financial, that many minorities (women included) now wield.
"All of the communities we focus on are projected for growth in income, in the number of professionals, in the number of second-generation community members coming to the U.S. when they're very young and in the number of those who are born here but still carry some of the characteristics and traits of their original markets as they assimilate here," Conti says.
In 2012, 62% of New York Life's new hires in the field were women or individuals who represent the cultural markets. That number should be replicated, if not topped this year, Conti says, as New York Life continues its long commitment to hiring and supporting women and individuals serving, among others, the African-American, Chinese, Hispanic, Korean, South Asian and Vietnamese markets.
But Conti believes that the resources New York Life provides to its many agents working in the field among different communities is just as important as the outreach work the agents do.
