Women in Finance Charter and gender pay gap reporting
FSCS is proud to be a signatory of the Women in Finance Charter, promoting gender diversity in financial services.
Gender pay gap reporting
FSCS recognises transparency and gender pay gap reporting as a critical part of driving change; publishing this data regularly, including before our organisation reached the size where this became a requirement.
For the 2022/23 financial year, our gender pay gap was 1.49% in favour of females compared to the 2021 national average of 15.4% in favour of males.
FSCS’s gender pay gap employer report is available here on the government website.
How we calculate our gender pay gap
Our gender pay gap is calculated in line with government guidance. More information can be found here on the government website.
Women in Finance Charter
FSCS is proud to be signatory to the Women in Finance Charter.
The charter is a commitment by HM Treasury and signatory firms to work together to build a more balanced and fair industry. Firms that sign up are pledging to become one of the best businesses in the sector.
To drive our progress towards gender parity, we measure the number and percentage of women at all levels of the organisation. We are proud of the increase we have achieved so far, having already exceeded our goal of 50% women in leadership in the organisation.
Female representation in senior management
Increasing the representation of women in senior roles remains a key priority. Research has provided evidence to support the premise that people who differ from one another in gender, ethnicity or other characteristics bring a diversity of perspectives to an organisation which in turn enhances creativity and lessens group-think scenarios. Studies have shown that women in leadership provide organisations with greater innovation and increased growth.
To allow FSCS to leverage these benefits, it was agreed that an equal split in the management population would provide the diversity of thought, skills and innovation required to meet our challenging new strategy for the 2020s. We have introduced gender-diverse recruitment panels and deliver unconscious bias training for all staff. A female-specific leadership programme and new career pathway process was implemented in 2020, to equip female employees with the skills and abilities to progress into leadership roles.
When we signed up to the Women in Finance Charter in February 2018, we had 33% female representation in senior management. In September 2023, we had increased the representation in our Executive Team to 80% and our Board to 75%, making them predominantly female. Our Executive and Board representation have therefore exceeded the 50% target we set ourselves. Our overall female representation in senior management was 45% in September 2023, falling just short of our ambitious target.
We believe being bold and brave in our targets and actions is the way to achieve change, so we will continue to push for gender representation within our Senior Leadership Community.
As part of the charter, we have committed to the following internal targets for gender diversity:
- 50% (+/- 5%) women in senior management roles by December 2022, which we have achieved. To ensure we maintain this, our new target is to maintain 50% (+/- 5%) women in senior management roles by December 2024.
- 50/50 gender split (equal numbers of female and male candidates) shortlisted for all vacant roles.
- Increase female representation within IT and data teams to 20%.