Women in UK finance earn a third less than male colleagues, shows data

LONDON: Some of Britain’s top financial firms pay women 28.8 percent less on average than male counterparts, salary data from 21 companies reviewed by Reuters shows, even though they say they are striving to hire more females for higher-paid, senior roles.

Banks, asset managers and insurers across the UK have committed to narrowing long-standing gender pay gaps, which they largely attribute to there being more men in top jobs that come with generous bonuses, while a greater proportion of women are in lower-paid, part-time or junior jobs, with smaller bonuses or none at all.

The gap for the top financial services firms has narrowed by two percentage points from a year ago, according to Reuters calculations based on the salary data, but remains far higher than the mean average for all industries in Britain which was 10.7 percent last year, based on a UK government survey.

Since 2017 businesses with more than 250 employees in Britain have been required to disclose the difference between the pay and bonuses of male and female staff.