What is the Women in Finance Charter?

The Charter is a pledge for gender balance across financial services firms. It reflects the government’s aspiration to see male-female balance at all levels of seniority. A balanced workforce is good for business: it is good for customers, for profitability and workplace culture, and is increasingly attractive for investors.  It is also the right and fair approach for firms to take.

The Charter is particularly focussed on supporting the progression of women into senior roles in the financial services sector by focusing on the executive pipeline and the mid-tier level. As a result, it requires firms to set targets for gender diversity in senior management publicly and publish progress annually against these targets.

The charter is a commitment by HM Treasury and signatory firms to work together to build a more balanced and fair financial services industry. The Charter was introduced following the ‘Empowering Productivity’ report into harnessing the talents of women in finance.

EQ’s targets

By signing the charter EQ has pledged to promote gender diversity by:

• having one member of our senior executive team who is responsible and accountable for gender diversity and inclusion;
• setting internal targets for gender diversity in our senior management;
• publishing progress annually against these targets in reports on our website;
• having an intention to ensure the pay of the senior executive team is linked to delivery against these internal targets on gender diversity.

Our original target was to have female representation within our senior management at 35% by April 2022.

We’ve met this target in each of the past three years and are now looking to increase this to 40%, to be achieved by the end of 2026.

I’m proud to be part of a senior management team that celebrates women in leadership. It underlines our commitment to focus action on attracting, retaining, and developing talented women to not only enable us to achieve a gender balanced workforce, but also to create a diverse, open, and inclusive culture where everyone is a valued member of the EQ team. And I pledge to do all I can to champion women in finance and inspire young women to follow finance as a career.

We see our commitment under the Women in Finance Charter as symbolic of the balanced and inclusive working environment needed to succeed in financial services.