FCA commits to having 50/50 gender split in its senior leadership team by 2025
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has unveiled a new set of diversity targets as part of an effort to show its commitment to inclusion.
The City watchdog published targets for the Women in Finance Charter, which it signed in June 2016 and announced its Black, Asian, minority ethnic (BAME) targets for 2020 and 2025.
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The FCA pledged to ensure that:
- 45 per cent of the FCA senior leadership team will identify as female by 2020 and 50 per cent by 2025
- Eight per cent of the FCA senior leadership team will identify as BAME by 2020 and 13 per cent by 2025
Currently its senior leadership team is 61 per cent male and three per cent is BAME. It used data from the Office of National Statistics to set its targets to make them representative of the diversity of the UK population.
Chief executive Andrew Bailey said:
“Every day we make judgements and decisions that impact almost everyone in the UK so it’s vital that our people reflect the society that we serve.”
He added that: “Encouraging diverse attitudes and opinions in our daily work makes us a stronger and more effective regulator.”
The government’s Women in Finance Charter was drawn up earlier this year to improve gender diversity in senior positions within the sector. It commits firms to link the remuneration packages of their executive teams to gender diversity targets and asks companies to set internal targets for within their senior management and publish annual progress reports.
72 firms signed up, employing over half a million people. Insurers are the most widely represented – 15 committed to the Charter, while retail banks, asset managers and mutual also signed up.
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