LONDON — Morgan Stanley is changing the way it looks at inclusivity and diversity in financial services through its Inclusive Ventures Lab. 

“We have been working on thinking about the equity in this space,” said Sanghamitra Karra, EMEA head of multicultural client strategy and multicultural innovation lab at venture capital group Morgan Stanley, Wednesday at FinovateEurope in London.

For example, “The amount of venture capital funding that goes into female or ethnic minority and businesses anywhere in the world is less than 2%,” she said. “That is something the venture capitalist is working on, gender and minorities. … We need to be able to pull more strands of that intersectional diversity, and that’s what makes us a better unit.” 

The Inclusive Ventures Lab, formerly known as the Multicultural Innovation Lab, has had 69 start-up participants, has provided $157 million in funding and has a combined valuation of $674 million of companies that have participated in the lab, according to the Morgan Stanley website. 

The most recent cohort from the lab included two fintechs: Software-as-a-Service management system Auditmate and legal software platform Advocat.