You’ve probably heard buzzwords like cultural fit, community empowerment, transparency, and sustainability. However, when a company or financial institution embodies these terms, it no longer  needs buzzwords. This article explores insights from leaders at Indigenous-led financial institutions, who integrate their cultural values into financial services, community empowerment, and sustainable  development to foster economic inclusion and drive growth.

Mark Sevestre (left-hand side) & Geordie Hungerford, CFA (right-hand side)

Mark Sevestre, General Manager, Misssissaugas of the Credit First Nation Community Trust, was raised in Burlington, Ontario, before being recruited for football at Mount Allison University, where he studied commerce. He worked at BMO for several years, first as a Branch Manager on a reserve just outside London, Ontario, and then later in Toronto, before becoming General Manager at the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation Community Trust. In 2006, he was a Founding Member and Senior Advisor of the National Aboriginal Trust Officers Association (NATOA). He currently resides in Six Nations of the Grand River.

When asked how he ended up doing so much for the Indigenous community, Sevestre said, “A lot of work that I have done was merely that no one else was doing it, and it just happened to fall in line with a lot of the stuff that I had done.”

Vancouver-based Geordie Hungerford, CFA, is a consultant who studied engineering in his undergrad and then worked in equity research and a tech startup in Greater China. After working as a Consulting Associate at McKinsey & Company and as a technology investment banker at Broadview Jefferies, he transitioned to securities law, while in his spare time supporting the Gwich’in First Nation (Hungerford is Gwich’in) as a Gwich’in representative on the Arctic Economic Council and as a Board Member with the Gwich’in Development Corporation in Inuvik, Northwest Territories. When asked about his career journey, Hungerford remarked, “I like to really challenge myself, and I like to see patterns and trends before other people see them.”

Understanding barriers

Most financial institutions today have a set way of doing things—from how they provide investment advice to their analytical analysis, hiring practices, and organizational structure. Too often this means that many minority communities do not qualify for funding opportunities, which includes Indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples, amongst other communities, have a community culture of helping each other out when needed, where needed, without asking. Many financial institutions, on the other hand, focus more on the financials, such as return on investment (ROI), and have many layers and rounds of reviews before any loan is approved.

While there is increasing acknowledgment of the potential of the Indigenous economy and a greater commitment to Indigenous funding, many institutions still do not understand or have the appetite to structure financial risk to unlock the opportunities the Indigenous economy is bringing to the table. Additionally, Indigenous peoples are not a part of the discussion at large financial institutions, partly due to these organizations’ hiring practices, partly due to their values, and partly due to the lack of Indigenous members on their boards.

Finally, many people and institutions hold broad assumptions and biases about Indigenous peoples, such as that they are all against oil or other specific market segments.

Integrating cultural values

Recent media coverage of the treatment of Indigenous peoples and unmarked children’s graves at former residential schools raised awareness of the attempted erasure of Indigenous cultures and values in Canada. The result is a greater willingness of Canadians to get involved and integrate Indigenous cultural values into their companies to help correct the past, while addressing the issues above.

Hungerford and Sevestre suggest actions that individuals and firms can take to meaningfully integrate cultural values and move beyond buzzwords:

• Consult
  When reviewing companies in your portfolio, ensure that Indigenous peoples are consulted about their values, the land, their culture, etc., to ensure companies make the right commitments to Indigenous communities. Talking to and understanding the community are key factors in designing the right type of portfolios.
• Connect
  Work with organizations like National Aboriginal Trust Officers Association and consultants like Hungerford to understand why Indigenous peoples don’t work for your firms. There may be interested Indigenous candidates, but recruitment, advancement, and board opportunities are often not inclusive.
  
• Support better regulation
  Better regulations are needed for Indigenous products and financial opportunities, and these regulations need to include Indigenous perspectives from the moment the regulations are being designed or updated.
  
• Provide professional development opportunities
  Create opportunities for professional development for lower-ranking staff to ensure equality in hiring practices. At the same time, reduce the company’s layers of hierarchy to make it easier to have a team-based approach to collaboration, rather than a top-down approach, which is more compatible with approaches in many Indigenous communities.
  
• Review hiring practices
  Companies must hire Indigenous people at all levels of the organization, which is notably lacking in investment banking, asset management, and trading. Hiring Indigenous people and people from diverse communities at the lower levels is tokenism and not enough. Indigenous people need to be hired or promoted to senior management and onto the board. Senior Indigenous leaders can help the organization transform to be more welcoming for Indigenous employees and Indigenous clients.
  
• Expand
  A broader suite of Indigenous financial institutions and Indigenous financial solutions need to be created. Hungerford gives an example of a project he worked on to create a bond standard with Indigenous taxonomies. A values-based approach based on traditional cultural values is critically important, and a regular KYC (know your client) form may not cover that understanding.
  
• Build change for the next generation
  Change cannot come from the outside. Schools, universities, associations, and other institutions must establish programs and scholarships that bring more Indigenous people into the business world and into science, technology, engineering, and math programs early on (as early as middle school) to later make these changes from within firms.
• Create a dialogue
  There needs to be an open and honest conversation with Indigenous communities. Communities are not necessarily against certain developments, including fossil fuels, oil, and mining. However, many Indigenous communities’ values have always been about sustainable and inclusive ways of taking from nature and giving back to it (a trend in sustainability—a circular economy).
  
• Listen and learn
  As we move down the path of sustainable development, listen to Indigenous communities for whom this is a way of life and have this entrenched in their lives, and who can thus help guide the path forward.

 As financial and investment professionals and leaders, we must learn, grow, and bring about change. As Sevestre puts it, “The role that a CFA charterholder plays in the community will have an impact on the Indigenous communities and on the world’s future.”

We need to set up our companies for success and ensure everyone is heard and has a voice at the table. We must move past conversations and performative statements and act now. As is often said, with great power comes great responsibility. We have the power, now let’s take the responsibility as well.