HMT Women in Finance Charter: update on progress

Standard Life Aberdeen were among the first signatories to the HM Treasury Women in Finance Charter in 2016, demonstrating our commitment to inclusion and diversity and pledging to increase gender balance in our senior management populations and across our industry.

Today, (Wednesday 8 October 2018) we have published an update on our progress against our Women in Finance Charter targets and our refreshed Gender Action Plan, detailing how we will make change happen.

At the end of 2017, our Board had 25% female representation, our executive level had 27% and our entire UK and global workforce both had 47% female representation. As at the end of August 2018, our Board representation decreased slightly to 21%, our representation at executive level increased to 33% and our UK and global workforce stayed the same at 47% and within the tolerance for our target.

We are pleased with the progress we have made to date and believe we are on track to reach our targets by June 2020. However, we are not complacent and recognise more needs to be done, particularly at Board level and with our Executive Committee.

This progress is in the context of significant change for our business, with an organisational design that continues to evolve following two large corporate transactions over the last 18 months - the merger of Standard Life plc and Aberdeen Asset Management and the sale of our UK and European insurance business to Phoenix Group.

Our progress against targets is welcomed but our focus and actions are on eliminating volatility and making sure that this is sustainable in the long term. We know that representation levels are vulnerable to the business changes we are going through and we want to achieve stable representation of women at all levels as we go forward.

To help deliver sustainable progress we have published our refreshed gender action plan (PDF). 

Read more on our inclusion and diversity page.