More organisations have signed up to the Women in Finance Charter

Introduction

On 23 June 2020, a further 42 firms signed up to the Women in Finance Charter, pledging to promote gender diversity, taking the total number of signatories to over 370, covering 900,000 employees across the sector. 

The latest annual review of the Women in Finance Charter was in June 2020. This review considers data from 187 signatories. Of those signatories, 81% had either met targets, or were on track to meet them and 76% of signatories either increased or maintained the proportion of women in senior management during the reporting period. Whilst this progress is encouraging the review notes that the pace of change is slow (female representation has only edged up by one percentage point each year since the first cohort reported in 2017) and 40% of signatories have set targets at 33% or below, with only 14% of signatories aiming for parity.

New charter signatories from  23 June 2020 (gender diversity targets to be reported to HM Treasury by 30 September 2020):

• 57 Finance
• Appreciate Group (formerly Park Group)
• Blakeney Partners
• Bluecoat Software
• Barvura Solutions
• BRUIN Financial
• Capco
• Capital b Property Finance
• Catalyst Claims
• Chaucer Syndicates Limited
• CrownStone Consulting
• DDGI Limited
• ENRA Group
• Family Assurance Friendly Society
• First Assurance Friendly Society
• First Central Services UK Limited
• Funding Options
• Guy Carpenter UK
• Higgins Fairbairn Advisory LLP
• Homes England
• Interactive Investor
• Iona Capital
• Khandokar & Co Limited
• Leek United Building Society
• Macquarie Group
• Newcastle Building Society
• Partners Credit Union
• Perella Weinberg Partners
• Progeny Wealth
• Redwood Bank
• Rothschild & Co
• Shepherd Global
• Shepherds Friendly Society
• Social Investment Scotland
• Swoop Funding
• The Cambridge Building Society
• TransferWise
• True Bearing Ltd
• Unividual
• Wealth Matters
• White Oak Underwriting
• Zebedee Capital Partners

The full list of signatories is available here.

The Charter

The Charter follows the Gadhia report in March 2016 “Empowering Productivity: Harnessing the Talents of Women in Financial Services” (as summary of the report is available here).

The Charter is “a pledge for gender balance across financial services” being a commitment by HM Treasury and signatory firms to work together to build a more balanced and fair industry.

The Charter:

• commits firms to supporting the progression of women into senior roles in the financial services sector by focusing on the executive pipeline and the mid-tier level
• recognises the diversity of the sector and that firms will have different starting points - each firm should therefore set its own targets and implement the right strategy for their organisation, and
• requires firms to publicly report on progress to deliver against these internal targets to support the transparency and accountability needed to drive change.

By signing the charter, an organisation pledges to promote gender diversity by:

• having one member of the senior executive team who is responsible and accountable for gender diversity and inclusion
• setting internal targets for gender diversity in our senior management
• publishing progress annually against these targets in reports on their website, and
• having an intention to ensure the pay of the senior executive team is linked to delivery against these internal targets on gender diversity.

For a summary of the current and proposed diversity reporting obligations in the UK, please see our article “Taking stock: UK Diversity reporting - metrics and proposed changes”.