Every year, FHFA's Office of Minority and Women Inclusion (OMWI) issues a report to Congress detailing activities and accomplishments designed to increase diversity and foster inclusion both internally and within the entities we regulate – Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the 11 Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLBanks), and the Office of Finance (OF) (collectively, regulated entities). It's an opportunity to evaluate how well we're doing in meeting our statutory responsibility to promote diversity and inclusion and take stock of our progress, which was encouraging in 2015.
The OMWI Annual Report to Congress describes the measures FHFA took in 2015 to foster a diverse and inclusive work culture and increase minority- and women-owned business (MWOB) participation in our procurement activities and to encourage the regulated entities to do the same. The report provides hard data to describe our progress.
During the past year, FHFA's OMWI continued efforts toward integrating diversity and inclusion into every aspect of FHFA's business practices, starting with our workforce.
- FHFA's 2015 workforce was 40.97 percent minorities and 43.65 percent women, which was higher than the federal workforce at 35.08 percent and 43.22 percent, respectively.
- FHFA's minority representation increased from 38.20 percent in 2014 to 40.97 percent in 2015.
- Of the 55 employees FHFA hired in 2015, 61.82 percent were minorities and 54.55 percent were women.
While our diversity statistics are encouraging, a key measure of inclusion is the distribution of minorities and women at all levels of the organization.
- In 2015, 40 employees were promoted. Minorities represented 42.50 percent of those promoted and women represented 47.50 percent.
- Diversity in FHFA's leadership has increased since 2011. Minorities represented just 10.17 percent of FHFA's leadership in 2011; in 2015, that number was up to 26.53 percent.
- In 2011, FHFA's leadership was made up of 25.42 percent women compared to 36.65 percent in 2015.
As these statistics show, we are making progress in building a leadership team that reflects the diversity of our workforce, but certainly there is opportunity for more growth. We continue to be proactive in our efforts to promote diversity and ensure inclusion through recruiting, hiring, promoting, and retaining employees at all levels of the Agency.
In the area of procurement, FHFA also increased its spending and contracting actions with MWOBs, with spending rising from $8,557,842 in 2014 to $10,552,620 in 2015, and contracting actions growing from 145 in 2014 to 154 in 2015, a 6.21 percent increase. The Agency spent an aggregate of $35.91 million through contractual arrangements in 2015 and, of this, $10.55 million was spent with MWOBs, a total of 28.95 percent. This gain was accomplished by working with individual offices within FHFA to increase awareness of the importance of doing business with MWOBs, as well as sharing information on the processes that help departments research and identify potential MWOBs that can meet their business needs. While the nature of our mission as a regulator and our comparatively small size as an agency present challenges to expanding our MWOB spending, we continue to work within our parameters to overcome these challenges.
Finally, 2015 saw a major accomplishment with respect to OMWI's promotion of diversity and inclusion within the regulated entities: the implementation of a final rule that allows FHFA to ask the FHLBanks to report on the participation of women and minorities on their boards through their annual reports. Additionally, the FHLBanks and the OF must report on the outreach activities they conducted in the course of recruiting new board members. Other initiatives continue to drive diversity and inclusion through the 2015 Scorecard for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Common Securitization Solutions, which requires those entities to consider diversity and inclusion in all of their business activities.
This post gives you a sense of some of the highlights from our OMWI Annual Report. We believe the report shows how deeply FHFA recognizes the value of diversity and inclusion. Our commitment continues in 2016.
By: Sharron Levine
Director, FHFA Office of Minority & Women Inclusion