Yorkshire Building Society is a signatory to HM Treasury’s Women in Finance Charter

women in finance charter logo

What is it?

The Women in Finance Charter is a pledge for gender equality across financial services from HM Treasury. It is a commitment to work together, across our industry and with Government, to build a more balanced and fairer financial services industry.

Organisations who have signed the Charter have made a clear commitment to improve diversity, ensure that women are able to progress into senior roles, set targets to support this work and regularly report on their progress. 

 

Our ambition (target)

At Yorkshire Building Society, as a signatory we’re committed to achieving gender balance in our senior management team. We signed up to the Charter in 2018 and set ourselves the target of achieving gender balance across all senior management colleagues, with a minimum of 40% of either gender, by 2023.

As of September 2020 we achieved our target with 44% female representation in senior management roles, which increased from 39% in 2019. Since 2020 we have continued to improve gender balance and as of September 2024, we have 48.4% female representation in senior management roles. However we know there’s still more to do to ensure long-lasting change and we’ll continue to work on achieving gender balance across all our senior management colleagues by 2030

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Our Progress on Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) at YBS

Our refreshed DE&I strategy sets out our vision to be a leading organisation that embraces diversity, champions equity, and creates an inclusive environment where all individuals feel valued, empowered, and supported, regardless of their background or identity.

Over the next three years, we’ll build on the great foundations we’ve put in place, improving representation at all levels, especially in our senior roles. Through inclusive processes we hope to build a sense of belonging for all, recruiting and retaining diverse talent, and creating opportunities for all colleagues to progress without barriers.

The delivery and execution of our strategy is overseen by the DE&I Forum, our Executive sponsor and the ESG Committee. 

We have focused on the following areas over the course of 2024:

  • Following our signature of the Menopause Workplace Pledge in 2022, we introduced Menopause Champions in 2024 and rolled out training for our colleagues and people leaders, to help them support those going through the menopause. 
  • Over the past 12 months we have continued our focus on hiring women into our senior roles, working with our recruitment partners to source diverse talent and achieve balanced shortlists. With 48.4% of senior roles now filled by women, we’ll continue our work to maintain this in 2025 but will expand our focus to consider other areas of underrepresentation in these roles, for example ethnic minorities and those from lower socio-economic backgrounds. 
  • We maintain our focus on Board Diversity and in April 2024 Annemarie Durbin took over as Chair of the Board, and we now have 60% of Board roles filled by women..

By continuing to back this Charter, we're making a public commitment to help improve diversity in financial services.


Our continued focus

In the next year we will continue to increase our efforts to embed an inclusive culture and ensure that our senior leadership becomes more diverse as a result. In 2025 we’ll continue to embed ‘inclusive leadership’ into all of our leadership training programmes, offering people leaders tools and support to help our colleagues overcome barriers to inclusion. Through education on allyship, we’ll help every colleague to understand the role they play in making the Society a more inclusive place for everyone. 

However, our focus is on much more than targets and we’re not limiting our attention to just gender diversity. We’re doing a lot of work to build a more diverse business at all levels, ensuring that people supporting our customers or making decisions about the future of our Society bring a wide range of experience and understanding to their roles.

We think that this work will help us develop fantastic future leaders within our organisation, and make Yorkshire Building Society an even more welcoming, diverse and exciting place to work. With a diverse leadership guiding our people and society, we are confident we’ll deliver the best possible outcomes for our members and customers.

 

For more information about the Women in Finance Charter visit:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/women-in-finance-charter