The 10th annual Citywire Alpha Female Report shows female-led fund assets have soared, but change in the overall number of women in portfolio management remains painfully slow.
Key findings
- Assets run by female fund managers have almost tripled in 10 years
- The rise of mixed-gender fund manager teams is key to this growth
- Percentage of female managers continues to increase gradually to 12.9%
- Germany lags major markets; just 7% of fund managers are women
The Alpha Female Report draws on figures from Citywire’s Fund Manager Database, which tracks career histories and performance of 18,400 individual portfolio managers worldwide.
Overall figures are heading in the right direction, but very slowly. This year’s report shows just 12.9% of fund managers worldwide are women, compared to 10.3% in Citywire’s first Alpha Female report back in 2016.
However female fund managers are being trusted with more assets than ever before. In 2016, assets run by female fund managers stood at £1.3tn. Since then, this figure has more than tripled to £4tn in 2025.
The findings reveal that the growth in assets managed or influenced by women was driven by the rise of mixed-gender fund manager teams. The percentage of funds run by these types of teams rose from 6.7% in 2016 to 14.9% this year.
In terms of assets under management, mixed-gender teams account for £3.4tn of the £4tn assets managed by women.
Sophie Downes, Citywire’s Alpha Female editorial lead, said: ‘While it can be easy to feel disheartened when representation remains so low, there is also cause for optimism in this year’s findings.’
‘The tripling of assets under management over the past decade is a shift that should not be underestimated. Meanwhile, the rise in mixed-gender teams suggests firms are increasingly recognising the value of cognitive diversity in investment decision-making.’
Germany is stuck near the bottom of the global league table, with women making up only 7% of fund managers.
While the representation remains low, however, funds run only by women in Germany are on average twice as big as those run exclusively by men.
