GENDER INCLUSION
Gender Inclusion | Race | Social Mobility | Age | Disability & Neurodiversity | LGBTQ+ |
We are committed to working with our members to achieve gender parity within the insurance and long-term savings industry. Currently our sector has great gender balance on entry-level equivalent roles. However, we have a long way to go to achieve parity at more senior levels. According to the 2022 ABI DEI Data collection, representation of women on executive teams is at 29%.
We expect to see more progress as firms adopt the practical steps we recommend, so that more women are able to advance into executive and board roles, and people who are in less senior roles can better balance their careers with family life and other interests.
The ABI has been encouraging its members to sign up for the Government’s Women in Finance charter since the charter was launched in 2016. We facilitate conversations between the charter and member firms in our DEI Network to ensure we remain committed to improving gender parity in our sector.
- Become a signatory of ABI’s Making Flexible Work Campaign and Charter, which is focused on supporting the industry to increase flexible working and reduce the gender seniority gap in the insurance and long-term savings sector.
- Become a signatory of ABI’s Transparent Parental Leave and Pay Initiative, which makes information of family-friendly policies available and easily accessible to both current employees and potential employees.
- Create opportunities for employees from all backgrounds to act as ambassadors for the industry to potential recruits.
- Review the inclusivity of communications (such as job adverts), removing phrases and imagery that are only relevant to some groups (such as ‘masculine’ words).
- Create a dedicated hiring process for career returners.
- When recruiting, consider longer hiring timelines to allow more candidates to apply (such as those with family or caring commitments).
- Consider signing the Women in Finance Charter, a government’s initiative which commits firms to setting, measuring and reporting against targets to improve the number of women in senior roles.
- Read the ABI’s 'Tackling the Gender Seniority Gap: What works for the insurance and long-term savings industry’ report for further recommendations.
- Commit to opening up existing roles to flexible working (including job sharing and part-time working). Read more information about job sharing here. Pro-actively plan for a structured pipeline of opportunities for secondments and mid-career apprenticeships (such as when filling parental leave and other career-breaks/sabbaticals offered to colleagues) so as to offer opportunities to people who may not automatically apply for a permanent promotion.
- Aim to publish Gender Pay Gap information annually.
- Review and update targets on gender across organisational levels.
- Aim to collect and be able to analyse more granular data on representation to understand how intersectionality impacts the individual experiences of employees in your organization. As part of our sponsorship with the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Women & Work, ABI contributed for the 2019 report, Inclusivity and Intersectionality Toolkit.
Forty three of our members have signed the Women and Finance Charter:
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Admiral |
Direct Line Group |
Lloyds Banking Group |
ReAssure |
Read more and sign up through this link.