In May 2017, we signed the Women in Finance Charter, and pledged to improve the gender balance in our senior team. We said that by 2020 we’d aim to have women make up at least 40% of both our executive committee and our board.
We’re delighted to say we’ve achieved one of our targets, and with one open role on our board, we still have an opportunity to meet our board target by the end of the year too.
Here’s our yearly update on the progress we’ve made so far, and what will come next after 2020.
What is the Women in Finance Charter?
The Women in Finance Charter was launched by HM Treasury in response to the unequal gender representation in the financial services industry, especially in senior and mid-level management. It’s a voluntary charter that companies can sign to publicly commit to improving that imbalance.
When we signed the Charter in 2017, we committed to doing the following:
Having one member of the senior executive team who is responsible and accountable for gender diversity and inclusion
Setting internal targets for gender diversity in senior management
Ensuring any variable pay for the senior executive team is linked to delivery against our gender diversity targets
Publicly reporting on our progress every year
At Monzo, we empower the people closest to problems to make decisions, so decision-making and influence are distributed more evenly across levels in the company. We use our executive committee as a forum to debate ideas and challenge our CEO. For this reason from next year we will be expanding our goal to all senior leadership positions.
Our progress so far
We signed the charter back in May 2017, and at the time
38% of our board identified as women
11% of our executive committee identified as women
In September 2018
29% of our board identified as women
20% of our executive committee identified as women
In September 2019
22% of our board identified as women
27% of our executive committee identified as women
In September this year
37% of our board identify as women
43% of our executive committee identify as women
In 2020 we welcomed Chief Operations Officer Sujata Bhatia to the company, as well as Chief People Officer Sarah Pillmore. We also look forward to welcoming Stephanie Pagni in 2021 as our General Counsel.
This means at the date of submission (30 September 2020) we had achieved our target for our executive committee: More than 40% of our executive committee members are women.
Within our board we welcomed independent Non-Executive Director Fiona McBain, who joined on the 1st of January 2020. She joins Eileen Burbidge and Amy Kirk, two fellow Non-Executive Directors. We haven’t hit our board target for the charter yet, but we currently have an open position on our board which means we have an opportunity to meet it by the end of the year.
We are always looking for ways to make our hiring process more inclusive and we assess all candidates on their experience, skills and ways of working to ensure every new person we bring into Monzo is enhancing our community and raising our high bar for performance.
What happens next?
Monzo is committed to the Women in Finance charter, and will expand our goal to all levels of senior leadership going forward. We will continue to focus on making Monzo an enriching environment where they can do the best work of their lives.
We are actively hiring for a new Head of Diversity and Inclusion to help us focus our efforts in the most impactful places to make Monzo a place where everyone can belong. This individual will work with our accountable executive, Chief Operations Officer Sujata Bhatia, to make changes that impact Monzo at a systemic level in 2021.
This year we have created diversity and inclusion working groups across the Collectives at Monzo to identify strategic projects to improve diversity and inclusion data, training, and culture on a local level.
We believe that everyone at Monzo is responsible for making Monzo a more inclusive place and that we are all responsible in helping everyone belong. We’re looking forward to continuing our work on this and seeing how these groups combined with strategic process improvement and development can make change at Monzo.