Achieving Gender Parity

Tackling the Gender Seniority Gap

In September 2018, we published 'Tackling the Gender Seniority Gap: What works for the insurance and long-term savings industry’. The report addresses two questions: what practical steps will help get more women into senior roles and what interventions make the biggest difference? The dominant reason for the gender seniority gap is the ‘motherhood penalty.’ Women are more likely to take on the bulk of the childcare responsibilities and to work part-time, but once you work reduced hours it is harder to progress. To reduce the seniority gap, the industry needs to make it easier for part-time or formerly part-time employees to advance.

Following recommendations from the report, the ABI is now developing a Making Flexible Work Campaign and Charter, which is aimed at increasing flexible working and reducing the gender seniority gap in the Insurance and Long-Term Savings Sector.

Women in Finance Charter  

The Women in Finance Charter is a Government initiative which commits firms to setting, measuring and reporting against targets to improve the number of women in senior roles. 

The ABI was one of the first signatories to the Women in Finance Charter (WIFC) in 2016 and had originally set a 3-year target to achieve 45% female representation within our senior management population by 30 June 2019.  In 2020 we then subsequently renewed our target to set a more ambitious goal, and also recalibrated our internal definition of senior management so that this included our Executive Team and 1 level below this (our Assistant Directors) within the structure, rather than 2 levels below the Executive Team as it had previously been the case.

The ABI’s current targets under the Women in Finance Scheme are as follows:

Overall target:

• Achieve a 50%/50% female to male split across the senior management population of the ABI by 31 December 2022

Supporting targets:

1. Aim to maintain an over 50% rate of internal promotion into senior management positions.
2. Request a 50%/50% gender diversity split in long lists provided by recruitment agencies during senior management recruitment processes.
3. At least 50% of ABI colleagues to return from maternity leave / shared parental leave, and flexible working requests will be considered in line with best practice.
4. Equal opportunities for training and development are provided to both male and female colleagues, including mentoring.

In September 2020 the representation of women amongst the senior management population was 47.36%. We are delighted to confirm that, as of September 2021, representation of women amongst this group has now reached 50% and we have therefore met our target. Our aim is to maintain this level of representation, whilst recognising that as a small organisation small changes can have the potential to make significant differences to the data.

Since first signing up to the charter in 2016, when the representation of women was sitting at 36.96%, we have worked hard to ensure that we focus on gender and inclusivity issues as an organisation. We have continued to develop our working practices, and to nurture our internal talent pipeline.

We are delighted to have made such strong progress since we signed up to the charter in 2016 in relation to gender balanced representation. However, there is always more we can do in relation to this strand of diversity, and also to work to becoming a more inclusive employer overall. We are committed to working towards this both within our organisation and with the insurance sector more broadly.

Future Leaders

Future Leaders, the ABI’s award-winning executive development programme ensures a pipeline of diverse talent in the insurance and long-term savings industry. We are committed to having a programme that represents the customers and society we serve, and in 2019 we had more women than men on the programme. Visit our dedicated Future Leaders section to find out more.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Women & Work

The ABI is a sponsor of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Women & Work. The APPG provides a forum to constructively examine and debate the role that policymakers can play to deliver gender balance within the economy. We helped shape its 2019 report, Inclusivity and Intersectionality Toolkit, which includes reference to our Transparent Parental Leave Initiative.