Data-driven accountability, rather than lip service, is the next frontier for firms in reaching their diversity targets, a Goldman Sachs partner says.

Nishi Somaiya, who heads of a division of the London private capital business, recalls how when she joined Goldman as a trader 18 years ago, people would repeatedly approach the desk and assume she was the assistant.

“You might think this is an innocuous mistake, but when it happens repeatedly you start to think ‘I would have hoped we would be beyond that’,” Ms Somaiya told the London’s Women of the Square Mile Conference this week.

“The other thing ...