BACKGROUND
Whilst coronavirus might not be such a threat to the health of our young people it has disproportionately impacted on their employment prospects. At the IA, and across our industry, we are doing everything we can to continue to provide high quality opportunities for young people at this testing time. This includes launching a bespoke solution to help the investment management industry support the Government’s Kickstart initiative, which you may recall was launched by the Chancellor in his ‘Plan for Jobs’, and is being administered by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
The purpose of the Kickstart scheme is to help young people (16-24) who are on Universal Credit and at risk of long term unemployment by providing six-month work placements. This is an opportunity for our industry to respond to the Government’s call to help young people, and it has the added benefit of driving a more diverse pool of talent into our industry’s early career schemes.
SOLUTION
As the industry’s trade body, the IA is supporting members who would like to participate by acting as an industry representative group and Kickstart provider. This means we will contract directly with the DWP on behalf of the industry. Investment20/20 will further support participating firms by integrating industry knowledge and skills training into the delivery of these programmes drawing on our award winning pre-employment, Think Investments programme.
DETAIL
Participating firms will offer six-month work placements for a minimum of 25 hours a week. The roles need to be ‘new’ i.e. not replacing people who have been furloughed or made redundant. Firms will also need to be able to demonstrate how they will develop the young person’s employability skills and Investment20/20 will assist with this.
The DWP has allocated a £2 billion fund for Kickstart, but participating investment management firms will not accept taxpayers’ money, as our industry will self-fund the scheme by paying the London Living Wage, alongside the associated employer National Insurance contributions and employer minimum automatic enrolment contributions. Tesco, for example, are self-funding their Kickstart programme.
As the Kickstart programme is scheduled to close at the end of 2021, firms need to start their six-month Kickstart work placements before the end of 2021 but they do not need to have completed the placements by then. The recruitment process will involve drafting job description(s), which Investment20/20 will assist you with. All participants will be sourced directly from Job Centre Plus (JCP). The DWP is allowing a significant degree of flexibility in the recruitment process, size of applicant pool and there is no constraint on the type of roles members can recruit for.
NEXT STEPS
While we have reached the required roles and will be lodging the application with DWP shortly, we are still encouraging more firms to get involved and offer work placements. Gina Griesel, Client Relationship Manager of Investment20/20, would be delighted to discuss this further and can be reached via [email protected].
PARTICIPATING FIRMS
1. Albion Capital
2. BNP Paribas Asset Management
3. Boarder to Coast
4. Brooks MacDonald
5. Fidelity
6. HSBC Global Asset Management
7. Invesco
8. The Investment Association
9. J O Hambro Capital Management
10. J.P. Morgan Asset Management
11. Jupiter Asset Management
12. M&G
13. M J Hudson
14. Neuberger Berman
15. Orbis Investment Management
16. Principal Global Investors
17. Standard Life Investments