The Financial Services Compensation Scheme has signed the HM Treasury’s Women in Finance Charter.
The charter was introduced as a voluntary initiative in 2016 to improve the representation of women in finance.
It asks financial firms to commit to four industry actions to prepare their female talent for leadership positions.
The total number of firms signed up to the charter is now more than 162 and the Treasury has estimated about half the employees of financial services companies are now covered by the initiative.
An FSCS spokesperson said gender diversity was "crucial" to its success and the scheme recognised it was only through the collective accountability and collaboration of colleagues, teams and partners that performance targets would be achieved - including targets for diversity, inclusion and gender representation.
By signing the charter, the FSCS has agreed to ensure a 50:50 gender split in shortlisted candidates for all roles, increase female representation in its IT and data teams to 20 per cent and increase the female management population to 50 per cent by 2022.
David Blackburn, chief people officer at FSCS, said: "In 2017, FSCS formed a Women @ FSCS network to highlight our commitment and work on gender disparity in the workplace and in the financial sector in particular.
"As part of this work and with the help of the network, it was agreed that now was the time to set out our commitment publicly as a signatory earlier this year."
Tali Shlomo, people engagement director at Chartered Insurance Institute, said she was confident that as the industry continued to collaborate and sign up to initiatives like the charter it will drive positive change.
She said: "I am delighted that FSCS has signed up to Women in Finance Charter, the purpose of the charter has been to galvanise gender parity and it is great to see that our profession continues to come together as we commit to tackle some of the obstacles that continue to take place."
In July, St James’s Place and Lifesearch were part of the latest 67 signatories to join the charter - bringing the number of estimated number of financial services employees covered by the pledge to 760,000.
The Financial Conduct Authority signed the charter in June 2016.
rachel.addison@ft.com
