The insurance industry is supporting efforts to introduce ethnicity pay reporting as a further step to improving diversity and inclusion across all job levels and in all sectors.
Responding to a government consultation on the idea, the Association of British Insurers (ABI) has backed proposals to introduce a reporting requirement for firms to publish details of employees’ pay, broken down by ethnicity and pay quartile.
The ABI says the rules should be kept close to gender reporting requirements to make the process as simple as possible, and to enable firms to consider the two reports in parallel to give them a better overall viewpoint. Collating such information should give firms a top-line view of the diversity and pay structure of their whole organisation, helping to identify where interventions may be needed.
Compiling ethnicity data will be more challenging for firms given they may not currently collect it, and there could be over 18 different categories in use.
Louise Hanson, Director of Advocacy at the ABI, said:
“We already know nearly 8 out of 10 ABI members have an inclusion strategy in place as part of increasing the diversity of the people they employ. Improving the sector’s diversity is not just the right thing to do, it also makes business sense. In an incredibly competitive market, the firms which most closely represent the full range of customers they serve will have an edge over the competition.
“While collecting the data alone will not fix the problem, giving firms a better understanding of their own situation is an important next step. It will help enable employers to identify what interventions could be needed and where.”
The ABI has collected its own data on diversity within its membership, which is available here, and an update is due in the next few months. Our first collection showed the sector’s workforce to be 16% black, Asian or ethnic minority compared with 14% in the general UK working age population, but it was not possible to break this down across job levels.