Hope Capital - Women in Finance Charter
20 November 2018
What is the Women in Finance Charter?
This is a commitment by HM Treasury and signatory firms to work together with companies in financial services to build a more balanced and fair industry. Firms that sign up to this Charter are pledging to be the best businesses in the sector.
The Charter reflects the government’s aspiration to see gender balance at all levels across financial services firms.
How did it come about?
The Women in Finance Charter came about after the Government asked Jayne Anne Gadhia, CEO of Virgin Money to lead a review into the representation of women in senior leadership roles in the finance industry. What she found was:
- The pay gap between men and women is worse in financial services than in any other sector, with a woman earning 60p for every £1 that a man earns.
- Women made up 23% of boards at City firms but only 14% of executive committees.
- Just 6% of CEOs in the financial services sector are women.
What the Charter requires:
- one member of our senior executive team responsible and accountable for gender diversity and inclusion;
- internal targets set for gender diversity in our senior management;
- publishing progress annually against these targets in reports on our website;
- an intention to ensure the pay of the senior executive team is linked to delivery against these internal targets on gender diversity.
Hope Capital’s commitment
Hope Capital signed the charter in November 2018 and took immediate action.
Member of the senior executive team:
Hope Capital takes diversity and inclusion so seriously that it believes that responsibility for this should start at the very top of the organisation. So its CEO Jonathan Sealey is the person who has taken responsibility for making sure that Hope Capital keeps its gender diversity commitments.
Targets
Hope Capital’s target is that 40% of all senior management positions will be held by female employees.
At the moment Hope Capital already exceeds this as:
- 50% of its board are already female
- 75% of all staff are female.
Pay equality
The Charter commits companies to ensure the pay of the senior executive team is linked to deliver against gender diversity targets, but Hope Capital is going one step further and commits to equal pay for similar roles across the organisation.
Publishing progress
Hope Capital commits to publishing a report on its website in November each year to report how it is performing in line with its gender diversity targets.
