Gender Representation
Enabling Equality
We want to create a business that is more representative of the communities we serve and we are working hard to attract and retain talent that will enable us to achieve this. We are really proud of the progress we have made in advancing gender representation at Virgin Money at all levels of the organisation. We have already achieved our Women in Finance Target and in 2024 Virgin Money was recognised as one of the top 10 performers in the @FTSE Women Leaders Review. We achieved third place in the overall table for representation of women in FTSE 250 and number one in our sector. We know it is important that we are able to sustain this progress and advance and maintain our position.
Accelerating progress
Our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) strategy has four pillars that are central to our plans:
- Attracting, retaining and advancing talent
- Creating equity in the colleague experience
- Creating strong leadership accountability
- Building allyship into our Culture
The second strategic cultural focus, and our final pillar, is building allyship into our culture. In November 2024, we launched our Reciprocal Mentoring Programme which has been designed to connect colleagues from underrepresented backgrounds with senior leaders across the business. The aim of this programme is to create partners in progress who can learn from one another and develop skills with the long-term aim of creating a diverse, equitable and inclusive culture.
Our goal is to is to create a sustainable way to drive a consciously inclusive and connected culture across our organisation and to support colleagues and leaders to feel empowered through a deeper understanding of DE&I, which will ultimately accelerate the pace of progress for Virgin Money.
Our commitment doesn't end here
We want to create a business that is more representative of the communities we serve and we are working hard to attract and retain talent that will enable us to achieve this. Initiatives that are central to this objective are;
Our action plan
We're striving for gender equity, recognising that individuals will face different barriers when working towards the same goals. We want to break down these barriers and give everyone a fair chance to thrive, both personally and professionally.
By focusing on improving gender diversity, we are creating a sustainable and BRAVER way to drive a consciously inclusive and connected culture across our organisation.
We’ve introduced bold commitments for recruitment suppliers requiring them to include representative candidates on all selection lists. We also conducted a full review of our supplier base to ensure we are working only with suppliers who share the same ambition and passion for the topic of DE&I that we do.
We launched our Springboard programme which is designed for female colleagues to provide tailored support and take control of their own career journey. We’ve also introduced our Welcome Back programme to support colleagues returning to work after a period out of business.
We are a proud signatory of the Women in Finance Charter and have pledged to contribute towards creating a gender balance across financial services. We're committed to creating more female representation particularly at mid and higher levels across the business.
Our Family leave policy is available to all colleagues and from day one of their employment. The flexibility and depth of our policy enables expecting parents, parents and carers to manage their personal life without impacting their professional career.
Signing the pledge underlines our commitment to recognising the potential issues for colleagues affected by menopause at work, actively supporting those affected and encouraging open, positive and respectful discussion about menopause. Menopause and perimenopause can affect people of all genders, whether directly or indirectly. Which is why we’re doing our best to demystify the topic and provide support where it’s needed most with our Menopause Guidance and Masterclasses.
We've joined the Reed women in technology community to support women in technology and transformation is a to achieve their goals and ambitions. By providing access to mentoring, development and networking opportunities we are creating better pathways in to technology careers.
Balance
Alongside our inclusive policies and processes, we offer support and access to our colleague networks.
Our Gender Equality Network is striving for equality of opportunity, progression and recognition. Providing spaces for setwork members to connect and share experiences, working to reduce gender pay gap by encouraging career progression, mentoring, role models, diverse interview panels and female finance workshops, and promoting allyship in collaboration with other networks.
Gender pay reporting
At Virgin Money, inclusion is central to our purpose, and that’s why we have been focused on tackling barriers to address the gender pay gap. We are pleased to share that year-on-year we have seen a reduction in our mean pay gap and an increase in the proportion of females receiving bonus in 2024.
The majority of our colleagues are women, and we are delighted to have strong female representation within our senior levels of leadership across the organisation and to have seen a slight increase in the proportion of female colleagues in the upper quartile band. We know we’ve got more to do to help colleagues progress their careers and to close the gender pay gap. While we recognise this will take time, it’s the right thing to do and we’re committed to doing this.
We’ve continued to gather insight and experience from our workforce to understand what the barriers are and how we can tackle them. As a result, we’ve introduced a number of initiatives, which you’ll be able to read more about in our Gender Pay report below.
When we first started publishing our Gender Pay Gap report eight years ago, we said at the time this was not the work of a moment. This remains true today. We are committed to maintaining gender balance at senior levels of Virgin Money, supporting careers, and removing barriers to equity and advancement.