HM Treasury Women in Finance Charter – focus on acceleration

Charter signatories increased female representation in senior management to 36% in 2024 on average, in line with the one percentage point year-on-year rise since the Charter launched. Both Rachel Reeves MP, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Emma Reynolds MP, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, have called for faster progress. This report looks into the Charter signatory data to better understand:

• why we need to increase the rate of progress;

• what acceleration means for signatories;

• how signatories can move faster.

New Financial relies on support from the industry to fund its work. Our reports are available to New Financial member firms, government and regulators, and the media. If you would like to enquire about membership or receiving a copy of the report, please click here

We identified a sample of signatories that had accelerated their progress since 2019, and undertook a detailed analysis of their data to draw out insights. The research is based on multiple years of signatory data, both quantitative and qualitative, and is a companion piece to the 2024 Annual Review.

Key takeaways

1. Acceleration is necessary: Since the HM Treasury Women in Finance Charter launched in 2016, signatories have edged up by an average of one percentage point every year, reaching 36% in 2024. While this is progress, it is slow and at risk of slowing further.

   
   

2. A single percentage point uptick is vulnerable: If we look more closely at this one percentage point uptick, it is very exposed. There is a fine balance between the signatories that are increasing female representation in senior management roles and those that are not.

   
   

3. A long road to parity: The Charter’s overarching aim is for the financial services industry to move towards gender balance. Our estimates show that increasing at one percentage point a year, the cohort average would achieve gender balance in 2045, while two percentage points per year would get there in 2034.

   
   

4. Sectors are moving at different speeds: Focusing on the cohort average achieving parity masks the marked differences in representation by sector. The best performers are the UK banks and insurers, and furthest behind are the global / investment banks and investment managers. 

   
   

5. There are signatories moving at more than 1pp: Every year, the majority of signatories are making progress, and the majority of these are increasing by more than one percentage point. But, the drag of the signatories that are unable to maintain the proportion of women in their organisations has thwarted acceleration for the cohort as a whole.

Research methodology:

This report analyses data from the 205 signatories that have at least 250 staff and provided data to HM Treasury in September 2024 for the 2024 Annual Review, in addition to signatory time series data. The data was analysed by Sheenam Singhal and Jennifer Barrow, under the supervision of Yasmine Chinwala.

Acknowledgements:

New Financial is proud to be HM Treasury’s data partner for the Charter. We would like to thank Aviva, Santander UK, London Stock Exchange Group and City of London Corporation for sponsoring our work on the HM Treasury Women in Finance Charter, and to all our institutional members for their support.