HM Treasury Women in Finance Charter

HM Treasury Women in Finance Charter

A pledge for gender balance across financial services. MFB signed up to the HM Treasury Women in Finance Charter in June 2018. Here's an explanation of our commitment.

About the Women in Finance Charter

The Charter reflects the government’s aspiration to see gender balance at all levels within firms operating in the financial services sector. A balanced workforce is good for business – it is good for customers, for profitability and workplace culture, and is increasingly attractive for investors.

According to the 2017 World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, although 46% of employees within financial services are women, only 15% are working at the executive level. Clearly this needs to change.

At September 2019, 29% of the senior management team at MFB were women. Whilst this might be a higher percentage than the average, in reality, it represents just two women and we are mindful that over time the figure needs to rise. We are all committed to making it happen and ensure that we have a gender balance throughout the business.

Our Commitments

The Women in Finance Charter asks firms to commit to several industry actions to prepare their female talent for leadership positions:

Commitment 1:

Having one member of the senior executive team who is responsible and accountable for gender diversity and inclusion.

Our managing director, Gavin Richardson, assumes responsibility.

Commitment 2:

Setting internal targets for gender diversity in senior management including target date.

We commited to 40% women in senior management by 31 July 2021.

Commitment 3:

Setting internal targets for gender diversity across other areas of the business, including activity-based targets.

By 31 July 2021, we commited to:

• Currently only 12.5% of our Sales Team (3 of 24 mortgage advisers) are women. We aim to increase this to 20%.
• Currently 40% of middle managers are women, i.e. 2 of 5. If the number of middle managers increases, we aim to increase the percentage of women in these roles to 50%.
• Currently 33% (18 or 55) of all staff are women. We aim to increase this to 50%.
• We will work to ensure that gender diversity is an integral part of our firm’s value-set.
• When working with recruitment agencies, we will make them aware of our commitment to gender diversity and the associated targets so that at least 50% of job candidates are women.
• To help women move up the organisation and/or go on to take up more senior positions at other firms with the financial services industry, we will establish a company-wide learning strategy which sets out clear pathways for personal and professional development for all staff. We will encourage women to participate in relevant training programmes and monitor take-up and progress.

Commitment 4:

Publishing progress annually against these targets in reports on this website.

The deadline for reporting annual progress against targets to HM Treasury is 31 July 2019. Progress against these targets will be published on this web page no more than two weeks later.

Commitment 5:

Having an intention to ensure the pay of the senior executive team is linked to delivery against these internal targets on gender diversity.

The senior executives have a relevant discretionary bonus element linked to our 2021 gender diversity targets.

When we signed up to the Charter in 2018 we had 29% female . As of 2019, we have the same female representation in senior management. Unfortunately, this suggests that we are not on track to meet our Charter target by our deadline. Despite sharing our targets with recruitment agencies, we have still struggled to receive enough CVs from female candidates for available roles, which has hindered our ability to increase female representation within the workforce. Senior management are now looking at ways we can rectify this going forward so that progress can be made in 2020.