“This is a huge honour but also a huge responsibility. Ensuring women have as many opportunities as men in financial services is critical.    It’s critical for women. It’s critical to the future of UK financial services. And a successful, inclusive, financial services industry is critical to a revitalised UK economy.”

Amanda Blanc, Chief Executive of Aviva

The Women In Finance Charter, which Campbell & Fletcher Recruitment are proud members of, now has over 400 signatories and covers some 950,000 employees across the UK Financial Services sector.Signatories to the charter commit to help women progress into senior roles, to set targets for gender diversity and report on their progress towards these.

The annual review found over 70% of the Charters signatories have already met their targets or are on track to meet their future targets. With the obvious challenges of the Covid Pandemic, 72 of the 81 signatories who were due to meet their targets during the year, either achieved their targets or came close. Covid-relating promotion and recruitment freezes were reasons attributed to these near misses.

It was felt that most companies believe their recruitment processes will continue to be the most effective way to meet their targets, however many are also focusing on building an internal talent pipeline, and on using data to quantify the impact of greater diversity based on gender and ethnicity.

Campbell & Fletcher Recruitment Managing Director, Tracy Fletcher commented, “Given this years’ key messages we are more committed than ever in supporting our clients to achieve and exceed their diversity targets. The fact that the FCA is backing the Charter should highlight it’s importance to the whole of the Financial Services Industry. And now that the Charter is casting it’s net further with the inclusion of intersectionality on it’s agenda it is vital that companies are regularly reviewing their hiring strategies.”  

In a speech delivered as part of the review launch,  Financial Conduct Authority CEO Nikhil Rathi did send a warning to the financial services industry that diversity and inclusion should form a core part of firm and senior management culture, and that the regulator will start to take action where it fails to see improvements.

Campbell & Fletcher Recruitment work across the United Kingdom sourcing the highest equality talent in the banking and financial services industries. We are proud members of the Women in Finance Charter and are committed to closing the gender diversity gap.