Orbit lands technology role for Asset Owner Diversity Charter

By AI, Created 4:33 PM UTC, May 18, 2026, /AGP/ – Orbit Financial Technology will build the data and automation backbone for the Asset Owner Diversity Charter, helping the initiative collect, standardize and analyze diversity data from asset managers and owners. The move gives one of asset management’s most prominent diversity efforts a more scalable, auditable infrastructure as signatories seek better benchmarking and accountability.

Why it matters: - The Asset Owner Diversity Charter is adding a centralized data layer that could make diversity reporting more consistent across the investment industry. - The new system is designed to help signatories compare managers across regions, asset classes and assets under management. - The upgrade matters because the charter’s signatories collectively manage more than £1 trillion in assets. - Orbit’s role gives the charter a technology base for more standardized, auditable and scalable diversity data.

What happened: - Orbit Financial Technology was selected as the technology partner for the Asset Owner Diversity Charter, or AODC. - The announcement was made at the recent AODC annual conference in London. - Orbit will design, build and power AODC’s end-to-end data and automation platform. - The platform will support the full Asset Manager Diversity and Inclusion Questionnaire framework.

The details: - The system will include a secure platform for collecting responses from hundreds of asset managers and owners each year. - Each participating firm will have a dedicated environment. - Current and historical submissions will be aggregated into a structured, machine-readable dataset. - The platform will provide year-on-year trend analysis. - Benchmarking will cover firms, regions, asset classes and AUM. - Interactive dashboards will include drill-through and export functions. - Automated workflows, role-based access and data governance will sit at the core of the build. - Helen Price, co-chair of the AODC Steering Committee, said the charter’s impact depends on the quality, consistency and accessibility of the data behind it. - Price said Orbit’s platform will help signatories and participating managers report, benchmark and act on diversity data with more rigor than the industry has had before. - Orbit said its infrastructure is already trusted by global asset managers and processes more than 70 million documents a year across 75,000 companies. - Orbit said the new work extends that same reliability to AODC. - Orbit Financial Technology describes itself as an award-winning AI platform for institutional investment research. - The company says the platform is designed to support informed, data-driven decision-making and streamline research workflows.

Between the lines: - The appointment signals that diversity reporting in asset management is becoming more data-driven and more standardized. - AODC signatories want information that is transparent, comparable and defensible, not just narrative reporting. - Orbit’s selection also reflects a broader push among institutional investors to use better data for stewardship, ESG and workforce oversight.

What’s next: - Participating asset managers and owners will begin using Orbit’s infrastructure for ongoing diversity reporting. - The charter should gain a larger historical dataset over time, which will improve benchmarking and trend analysis. - Orbit and AODC will likely use the platform to support ongoing industry comparisons and monitoring. - Orbit says the partnership is a fit for large-scale, high-integrity data infrastructure, suggesting more institutional use cases could follow.

The bottom line: - AODC is turning diversity reporting into a more structured, tech-enabled process, and Orbit is now powering the system behind it.