Australia's insurance industry has uncovered areas of diversity in which it is not achieving premium results.
Women in leadership roles and acceptance of sexual preference rated as "perceived weaknesses" in the inaugural sector-wide survey of 2,487 employees from 21 organisations, conducted by Macquarie Bank.
Respondents were predominantly heterosexual (89 per cent), spoke only English (82 per cent) and were from Australia, New Zealand or the UK (80 per cent), while 48 per cent identified as Christian and 41 per cent stated they were of no religion.
Chris Mackinnon, from insurance market Lloyd's, says an initial sector snapshot will never deliver "the perfect result", and the findings provide a benchmark to help improve an industry that employs about 60,000 people.
Six per cent of those surveyed said they were LGBTI, while five per cent preferred not to respond to the question.
"That gives us a good indication that there are people who are uncomfortable about sharing who they are," Mr Mackinnon told AAP.
"About six per cent of respondents were not openly out at work so they're not bringing all of themselves to work."
While the insurance sector was fairly balanced in terms of gender - 51 per cent male, 47 per cent female, two per cent other or no response - this did not carry through to leadership roles, where 65 per cent are male.
"We're tracking okay but we're not good enough," Mr Mackinnon said.
He said a "very limited" response from workers aged under 25, just five per cent, also signalled room for improvement.
"Either they're not actively engaged with the discussion or they're not in our industry," Mr Mackinnon said.
"We've got to focus on removing unconscious bias and not just recruiting people who look, sound and feel like us."
However, the industry scored commendable results in offering flexible work for those with caring responsibilities.
Mr Mackinnon said the diversity survey, which had its results released on Tuesday, was a "rolling stone" with plans in place to compare results with another survey in a year's time.
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