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Gender Pay Gap at Association of British Insurers

The ABI’s gender pay gap

The ABI employs just under 100 people. Given its size it is not required to publish its gender pay gap information by law but is choosing to do so voluntarily.

Improving diversity in the financial services sector is a priority for us and our industry. We therefore felt it was important to publish our pay gap figures in order to ensure we are being transparent and holding ourselves to account, in the same way that our member firms are expected to do.

What is the gender pay gap?

At its simplest, a gender pay gap is the difference between the average wages of men and women employed across an organisation. This is different from equal pay, which relates to men and women being paid equally for equal work. Equal pay is a legal requirement that has been in place in the UK since the 1970s.

These numbers are equivalent to the statistics firms with 250 or more employees are required to provide. They reflect hourly pay rates as at the snapshot date of April 5th 2017 and bonus payments for the year leading up to 5 April 2017.

Huw Evans, Director General of the ABI, said:

“Gender pay reporting has helped highlight the significant diversity challenges facing financial services. The insurance and long-term savings sector is committed to greater diversity and inclusion which is why as its leading trade body, we felt we should voluntarily publish our own data.

“These figures show the ABI still has work to do on gender pay, primarily because of the greater number of men in our senior leadership positions. We were among the first wave of organisations to sign up to the Women In Finance Charter and despite meeting our initial targets, we know we need to go further. I know our members are also reflecting hard on their results and using gender pay gap data as they pursue their D&I strategies.”

Understanding the results

As a small organisation with just under 100 full-time employees, a modest number of outliers in the data have the potential to make a big difference to the overall percentage figures. This is why the disclosure rules have been formulated around firms with more than 250 employees but we wanted to publish our numbers anyway in the interests of transparency and to help keep our focus on this issue.

While the ABI has a 45.5% / 54.5% gender split within its management team, the pay quartile data shows that 30% of the highest paid staff members at the ABI are female versus 70% male. Analysing the data shows there are more male employees operating at an Assistant Director level than female, which is making a big contribution to this. In addition, three out of five directors are male and, given that the directors are paid more than any other group, this also influences the figures.

Considering the lowest pay quartile, 62.5 per cent of staff are female and this is also contributing to the gender pay gap. This is reflective of the fact that just over 59% of staff in assistant roles are female.

In considering the bonus gap, the gender pay gap regulations state that analysis should be run on the gross payments made regardless of circumstances, ie they do not factor in if an individual’s bonus has been calculated on a pro rata basis because of them working part time or being on parental leave for a portion of the year. In April 2017, 100% of the ABI staff working part time hours were female. They made up 9.5% of the total staff numbers.

The ABI does not pay bonuses to staff still in their probationary period. For the year in question, two thirds of staff still in a probationary period were female.

What is the ABI doing to tackle its gender pay gap?

The ABI had previously identified the need to address its diversity, given a 39.5% to 60.5% female to male split in the management team in June 2016. As signatories to the Women in Finance Charter (WIFC) the ABI has already met its target of shifting this to 45% / 55% and we are committed to ensuring we continue to target female talent for management positions. When we have Manager or Assistant Director vacancies we insist on having a 50%/50% gender split in our long lists for these roles.

We are continuing to focus on promoting and nurturing talent internally. Between April 2017 and February 2018, ten staff members were promoted internally across all levels and the gender split within this population was 60% female to 40% male.

We have delivered compulsory unconscious bias training to all staff, including the Executive Team, and use best practice to help avoid unconscious bias in recruitment. In 2017 the ABI shared parental and adoption leave benefits were enhanced further for staff members with greater than 2 years’ service and we continue to encourage a working environment where staff are able to strike a good balance between their home and work lives.

During the annual pay review process the Executive Team are committed to continuing to make suitable and justified salary adjustments over and above inflation where appropriate. Gender equality will continue to be taken into consideration as part of this process alongside other factors.  

The ABI continues to encourage all staff to focus on their personal and career development and there is budget available for all employees equally to utilise this.

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