The 10 year review of the Women in Finance Charter

The UK government launched the HM Treasury Women in Finance Charter in March 2016 to encourage the financial services industry to move towards gender balance in senior management. Ten years later, the Charter has ~400 signatories covering about 1.2 million employees across the sector.

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This 10 Year Review assesses the impact of a decade of the Charter on signatories and the financial services industry. We celebrate successes, but also draw attention to where work still needs to be done to drive a permanent sustainable change.

One of the Charter’s greatest assets is the time series of signatory data amassed over the past 10 years. This uniquely rich dataset offers unparalleled insight into how signatories are approaching their Charter commitments to drive female representation in senior roles, and how the reporting has evolved.

We also present the findings of the 2026 signatory survey, to understand signatories’ perspectives on the different impacts of the Charter and its four principles, and the challenges they face in striving towards their targets.

The impact of the Charter over the past decade

1. Female representation is increasing: The litmus test for the Charter is whether there are more women in senior management. Over 10 years, the average percentage of women in senior roles has risen slowly but consistently at one percentage point a year to 37% in 2025 for large signatories.

2. Signatories are hitting their targets: The second key indicator is whether firms are actually meeting their targets – 78% have hit their target at least once over the past decade. Targets are becoming more ambitious and the goal of parity is on the table.

3. Delivering productivity: The government has always positioned the Charter as a driver of productivity. Signatories are seeking to realise the strategic gains of increasing female representation via improved decision-making (74% of survey respondents) and to help them attract and retain talent.

4. Driving sustainable change: Two thirds (67%) of large signatory respondents to our 2026 survey said that being part of the Charter had driven permanent, sustainable change in their organisation, rising to 75% when asked about the industry as a whole. Nearly three-quarters (73%) said they might not have advanced to the same degree without being a Charter signatory. 

   
   

5. A business priority: Signatories said the biggest impacts of being a Charter signatory are maintaining focus on increasing female representation and promoting discussion at the highest levels of decision-making. The four principles together have changed the industry’s default position – gender diversity is now treated as a business issue that is integral to how business is run.

   
   

6. Setting a data standard: Annual reporting against Charter commitments over the past decade has helped embed a culture of transparency around diversity data reporting across the UK financial services industry (p.17), and inspired similar Charters at home and abroad (p.10).

The challenge ahead for the next 10 years of the Charter

1. Pipeline, transformation and momentum: The top three challenges identified by respondents to our signatory survey were lack of pipeline, organisational changes and sustaining momentum for action on female representation (p.21). The rapid advance of artificial intelligence (AI) and technology ranked fifth.

   
   

2. Widening gap between top and fourth quartile: The gap between average female representation of the top and bottom quartiles has grown from 11 percentage points in 2018 to 19pp in 2025. The trailing pack will need to work hard to bridge the gap, but there is little evidence of that effort thus far.

   
   

3. Sectors progressing at different rates: The Charter data shows clear differences in progress across sectors. While insurers broke through the critical milestone of 40% on average in 2025, UK banks have plateaued at 38% since 2022. Meanwhile global banks are improving but have slowed.

   
   

4. A long path to parity: Our analysis estimates that the signatory cohort average will meet its current average target of 39% in 2032, but parity is still a generation away – estimated to be reached in 2054. For all signatories to reach 50%, signatories will need to add ~15,000 women in senior roles, which is a 40% increase on today.

   
   

5. Moving at more than one percentage point: The government wants to see the signatory average moving at more than 1pp per year by the end of this parliament (2029). The Charter data shows that 45% of signatories did exceed 1pp in 2025, however, only 37% of signatories surveyed said this was achievable within the next five years.

   
   

6. Reducing the gender pay gap: While the financial services sector has reduced its mean, median and bonus pay gaps since 2017, it still has the biggest pay gap of any industry in the UK. Both the mean and median pay gaps at 24% and 22% respectively are double the national average for UK companies.