Our Women in Finance annual update

We’re confident that we will achieve our gender diversity target by December 2023

The Women in Finance Charter is a commitment by HM Treasury to improve gender balance across the financial services sector, which we signed in 2018.

Working towards a better representation of women in senior management and higher-paid positions is one of our key diversity and inclusion objectives. Our current target is that 45% of our senior managers are women by December 2023. 

We’ve focused on developing women in our pipeline talent, promoting male allyship and creating a menopause-friendly organisation to help us reach this target. 

What progress have we made since 2018?

When we signed the charter in 2018, our goal was that 40% of senior managers are women by 2021. When this target was set, we were at 37%, so our target was a three per cent increase over three years. 

In August 2020, we had already surpassed this target by achieving 42.4%. As a result, we increased our target to 45% by December 2023. 

Following a small drop in representation last year (down to 40%), we’re now continuing to make great progress towards our Women in Finance target. 

As of August 2022, we’re really pleased to report a positive improvement where we’ve seen an increase in representation to 44%. 

Our long-term goal

Although we’re getting closer to our target of 45% by December 2023, we’re aware of the challenges to maintain this level of senior women. As we have a small senior leadership team, a change in one role can have a big impact.

We remain positive that we’ll reach our 2023 target. A key area that supports this progress is that women make up half of our Board and Executive Committee.

We measure and promote gender diversity by publishing an annual report of our progress against our targets, all of which you can view here.