Sesame joins Women in Finance as success rate revealed

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Sesame joins Women in Finance as success rate revealed

The financial advice firm pledged its commitment to promoting gender diversity through setting internal targets in its senior management team and “having an intention to ensure” the pay of its senior executive team is linked to achieving the targets.

The process will be overseen by a member of its senior executive team who will be accountable for gender diversity and inclusion and ensure progress is published on an annual basis.

The firm said greater diversity should it help improve innovation, decision making and its customer service.

Lisa Winnard, HR & business services director at SBG, said: “We believe that a more diverse and inclusive workplace creates a better environment for people to thrive and achieve their full potential.”

The firm joined alongside 44 other financial services firms the names of which were published today (16 March) alongside the government’s first annual review of the initiative.

The review looks at the progress made by the first group of signatory firms (68) in their first year. 

It found 28 per cent of those have already met their targets for female representation in senior management while more than half (57 per cent) are on track to meet their future targets.

About three-quarters (78 per cent) of signatories either increased or maintained the proportion of women in senior management in the reporting period, while the percentage of women amongst senior managers at those firms increased 3 per cent on average in the first year.

The Women in Finance Charter asks financial services firms to commit to four industry actions to prepare their female talent for leadership positions. 

More than 200 firms have signed the Charter to date, meaning more than 650,000 employees in the UK are covered by the government’s plan to tackle gender inequality in financial services.

Prime Minister Theresa May said: “This is an important step forward, not just because this is about fairness, or simply about giving women an equal opportunity to get on, but because our workplaces are greatly enriched by different approaches.

“Time and again, I have seen first-hand how women can bring fresh thinking and new perspectives. And I know the commitment that women put into their jobs on a daily basis.”

But she said more needed to be done.

In February it emerged Barclays had a gender pay gap of 43.5 per cent, which was branded "shocking" by the chair of the Treasury select committee, Nicky Morgan, who demanded the gap be addressed.

Earlier this month Jupiter published its figures, showing female employees earned 38 per cent less per hour than their male counterparts.

Jupiter said the figures were skewed by the number of highly paid male fund managers and sales employees and pledged to increase the number of female employees in these two areas of its business, and support their progression to senior roles.

Anna Sofat, owner of Addidi Wealth, said she wanted to see big changes going forward and questioned whether firms were incentivised enough to significantly reduce the gender pay gap.

"We need to see a similar incentive to that raised by the Davies report [on the representation of women on FTSE 100 boards] so that by 2020 the companies have started to reduce it by say a third each year,” she told FTAdviser.

carmen.reichman@ft.com