Performative diversity efforts in the insurance industry aren’t just losing credibility – they’re becoming a liability. At the National Insurance Conference of Canada (NICC), leaders warned that doing nothing on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) now carries its own reputational and cultural risks for organizations across the insurance sector.
Asked to name the single greatest danger of performative DEI, Omari Aarons-Martin (pictured centre left), president and CEO of the National African American Insurance Association (NAAIA), didn’t hesitate.
“Inaction,” he said. “Inaction, which is kind of coming into style. It’s like we can do nothing, and we don’t declare a position… we’re not saying we’re for it or against it, but we’re also not speaking for it.”
Aarons-Martin’s point – that silence has become the new form of disengagement – struck a chord with the panel. Dionne Bowers (pictured left), chair of the Canadian Association of Black Insurance Professionals (CABIP), and Nicole Bonnie (pictured right), principal consultant at Firma Strategy Group, agreed that too many organizations treat DEI as optional branding rather than a core business strategy.
“It’s also a question of integrity,” Bonnie said. “There’s a line between who you say you are and what you actually do.”
Bowers opened the session by reflecting on how recent political and social shifts – including the return of Donald Trump’s administration in the United States – have reshaped corporate conversations around race, inclusion, and accountability.
“On November 10 of last year, the US welcomed a new, though in many ways, very familiar administration,” she said. “In the months since, we’ve seen a range of developments and behaviors that have raised some eyebrows and sparked conversations.”
Those political realities, she noted, have influenced how companies navigate diversity and public messaging.
“We’ve seen how certain incidents and reactions to them filter into the corporate world,” Bowers said.
Bonnie took the conversation deeper, arguing that the damage caused by performative DEI goes far beyond public perception – it undermines trust from within.
“I think at the core of it, performativity is easily picked up by staff,” she said. “When leadership feels like they’re getting away with being performative, and no one sees it… people see right through it. It’s the conversation that’s happening in the staff room and at the watercooler.”
That disconnect between stated values and lived behavior, Bonnie warned, corrodes an organization’s credibility over time.
“At the heart of it, performativity erodes trust,” she said. “When we say we’re going to do one thing – when we talk about our mission, our values, all the wonderful words on our websites and walls – but then act in contradiction to that, it erodes the trust of not only staff, but also the community, consumers, and partners.”
She challenged leaders to stop treating diversity as a communications exercise and start viewing it as an integrity test. It’s disingenuous to use words as signals for something that doesn’t align with the real culture or behavior of a company, Bonnie said.
True leadership, she added, means showing integrity when it’s inconvenient.
“It’s about doing the right thing even in those hard moments,” Bonnie said. “That’s what authentic leadership is about – standing by what you say you believe, especially when the tension rises.”
Ingrid Wilson, board member at the Canadian Association of Black Insurance Professionals (CABIP), said the industry’s DEI problem isn’t a lack of passion – it’s a lack of integration.
“When DEI really started to skyrocket in 2020, what did we do? Did we incorporate it into people and culture? No. We put it over here – by itself, without any structure, without any authority, without any power, without any money – and said, ‘Go and make this work.’”
That approach, she argued, guaranteed failure from the start. If your DEI office, or whatever, doesn’t have the autonomy to make change in people-centric practices, you are going to remain in status quo, Wilson said. Even when DEI sits within people and culture, too often it doesn’t have the authority to actually influence decisions, she added.
For Wilson, the disconnect is structural – companies claim to prioritize inclusion but silo the work in powerless departments.
“They’re told, ‘Build a plan,’ but can’t do anything to affect change,” she said. “So you’re never going to make change that way.”
She also criticized how many organizations have reduced DEI to “performative culturalism” – a cycle of symbolic gestures and themed events with no real connection to systemic change.
“Let’s do Black History Month. Let’s do the black square, green square,” she said. “It becomes focused on events versus embedding equity into every stage of the employee experience.”
True inclusion, Wilson argued, starts long before diversity campaigns – and continues long after them.
From recruitment and onboarding to leadership development and succession, DEI must be woven into the entire employee journey, she said.
“You follow that employee all the way through until you’ve developed them to the point where they say, ‘Thank you for leading me and lifting me up – I’m ready for the next opportunity.’ That’s what real leadership looks like.”
