Allica Bank commits to the Women in Finance Charter

I’m proud to announce that Allica Bank has joined the Women in Finance Charter.

Representation is a foundational part of our growth plan. As our Head of HR explained recently, it’s not only important from an ethical perspective, but from a business perspective, too. A diverse business is a strong business. Whether it’s our on-the-ground expert relationship managers up and down the country, our technology team, our executive team, customer service team, or back office staff; representation matters.

Committing to the Women in Finance Charter is one of many steps we’re taking to make sure our values translate into actions.

• What is the Women in Finance Charter?
  • The four pledges of the Charter
• What does gender representation at Allica Bank look like today?
• What more can we do to increase representation?
• Diversity, equality, and inclusion at Allica Bank

What is the Women in Finance Charter?

The Women in Finance Charter is a pledge for gender balance across financial services, launched by HM Treasury in response to Dame Jayne-Anne Gadhia’s 2016 review ‘Empowering Productivity: Harnessing the talents of women in financial services’.

Hundreds of businesses across the financial and fintech sectors have since joined the Charter, with over 1,000,000 employees working in businesses that have committed to gender equality and fair representation.

The four pledges of the Charter

1. Having a senior executive with responsibility and accountability for gender diversity and inclusion
2. Setting internal targets for gender diversity in senior management
3. Publishing annual progress via the Charter’s reports
4. Having an intention to link senior executive pay to the delivery of the above targets

Learn more about the Charter on the government’s dedicated webpage.

What does gender representation at Allica Bank look like today?

Here’s where Allica currently sits in terms of our activity to address gender representation:

• 40% of our workforce identify as female
• Since September 2021, female representation in our senior management positions has grown from 16.6% to 23%
• 37.5% of our executive team are female – up from 12.5% two years ago
• Every member of the Executive Committee, including myself, is responsible and accountable for gender representation, rather than one person (as recommended in the Charter)

The Charter has a big focus on increasing female representation in senior leadership roles, but we also measure gender balance across our entire staff body.

I’m pleased that we are making good progress towards greater equality, diversity, and representation, but we’re under no illusions that there’s plenty more work to do.

What more can we do to increase representation?

We’re working on two key targets right now:

1. 35% of women in senior management positions by March 2024
2. 45% of new starters in 2021 and 2022 to be female, leading to overall female representation of 45% across our staff by the end of 2022

Looking at our current progress, we’re on track to achieve both of these targets.

Diversity, equality, and inclusion at Allica Bank

Gender representation is just one piece of the representation puzzle. Our mission is to have a workforce that authentically reflects all societal groups, where each employee feels valued and empowered to perform at the highest level. With this in mind, we’re working on other initiatives to make Allica an even more diverse and inclusive workplace, too. And it’s something very important to me, personally.

You can find out more about how Allica is doing in our most recent biannual employee survey, which revealed that 97% of our team believe that Allica’s culture and environment support diversity. Those numbers suggest that we’re clearly on the right track, but there’s still plenty more we can do. And joining the Women in Finance Charter is just one more step on that journey.