City regulators were accused of passing the buck on making financial services a safe place for women to work, in a Treasury committee hearing.
The Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulation Authority were questioned by MPs for two hours on Wednesday (January 17).
Dame Angela Eagle claimed there had not been changes made in the five years since the Treasury committee published its Women in Finance report.
The report was published back in June 2019 and looked to identify the barriers to women entering and progressing in the financial services industry.
At the time, the committee said it would also scrutinise the role of government and financial regulators in acting as role models for good gender diversity practices.
Eagle said: “There have been attempts to change things but the overall picture seems to be depressingly the same.
“Whilst gathering data is important we are trying to come up with a report that will make a difference so any successor committee of ours doesn’t have to look again in five years and see it’s still not got any better.
“There is a frustration, there has been a lot of buck passing, a lot of box ticking and no actual improvement in output - that is making a workplace that is safe for women to be in across the financial services sector.”
She said the worst cases were believed to be in some sectors, including private equity, hedge funds and small firms.
The committee heard the FCA is starting work to understand how firms are detecting and solving cases of non-financial misconduct.
The regulator is starting this work by speaking to wholesale banking, broker and insurance firms.
Eagle asked the FCA: “How do you think, on non-financial misconduct, that your consultation proposals will root out bad apples.
“We came across evidence that was compelling, that everybody knows who these people are but nobody reports them because it is not practical for victims and if they are reported via HR within companies they are protected.”
Nikhil Rathi, FCA chief executive, said victims being put off reporting incidents is “deeply troubling”.
While Sarah Pritchard, executive director for markets and international, said the FCA seeks to try and prevent the situation of “rolling bad apples”, where people move into different roles.
The committee also heard that non-disclosure agreements can lead to victims being silence.
MP Caroline Nokes, chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, said women are scared to report incidents and were worried their anonymity would not be maintained.
The FCA has a whistleblowing line and Pritchard told MPs it can be used when an NDA is in place.
tara.o'connor@ft.com
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