How is Allica doing on gender diversity?

In 2022, Allica joined the Women in Finance Charter: 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’. 

We welcomed the call to action. For businesses who sign up, it’s a commitment to work together to build a more balanced and fairer industry. The Charter commits firms to supporting the progression of women into senior roles in the financial services sector by focusing on our executive team and the senior management. 

The financial services industry has businesses of differing shapes and sizes, and the Charter recognises that this diversity means firms will have different starting points and should therefore set their own targets. It also requires firms to publicly report on progress against those targets.  

The two key targets Allica has are:  

• to have overall female representation of 44% across our staff by the end of 2024  
• to have 35% of women in senior management positions by March 2024 

Improving our gender balance 

So how are we doing? At the time of writing, 42% of Allica employees are women.  

By the end of 2023 we had achieved 43% of female hires in our technology function alone. Roles like these typically see underrepresentation in the banking sector as a whole. With results like this, we're optimistic about achieving 44% of all Allica staff being women by the end of the year. 

Senior management 

As mentioned, a particular focus of the Women in Finance Charter is supporting the progression of women into senior roles, including our Executive Committee and senior management. 

As of December 2023, 40% of our Executive Committee  now identify as female. We were delighted to welcome  Chief Lending Officer Niv Subramanian in the last year. 

Regarding our second target of 35% of senior managers being women by March 2024, we’re looking good to hit this target. We increased the number of female senior managers in the company, from 23% in 2022 to 32% in 2023.

The direction of travel is clear and, at the time of writing, the figure stands at 34%. We are also especially proud that, across the company, a fifth of our female employees received a promotion in 2023. 

The big picture 

Of course, it’s no good trying to attract more women to work for Allica if the conditions we offer don’t support women in other ways. Working conditions that allow mothers to fit work around children make it more likely that women will join us, so in 2023 we improved our parental leave policies.  Our flexible working policy is also very much designed to help parents fit work around life. 

The numbers show that we’re generally headed in the right direction but also that there’s still more work to do. We expected this; improving the diversity of a company, particularly one that is growing as fast as Allica, will continue to be a work-in-progress.  

It is particularly gratifying that the work we are doing for better diversity is seen and appreciated by staff. From a recent survey we know that 92% of colleagues agree that Allica’s culture and environment supports diversity.  

As that growth continues, we’ll remain focused on creating a workforce that authentically reflects all societal groups, where each employee feels valued and empowered to perform at the highest level.