The Financial Times reported that financial services companies have the highest gender pay gap, citing an analysis of early returns on the government’s gender pay gap registry by data analytics company Staffmetrix.

According to Staffmetrix, financial services (which includes insurance firms) has a median gender pay gap of 31%, based on the 114 public and private sector organisations that had submitted their gender pay gap reports as of 10 October 2017. Of these, six were from financial services, including Virgin Money, TSB and Tenet.

Although this sample still only represents just over 1% of the 9,000 organisations employing more than 250 people that are now required to report the gap for mean and median wages and bonuses under new government legislation by next year, it does highlight the gender inequality that has existed within financial services for decades.

With a significant increase in the number of firms submitting their reports on a daily basis, it will be interesting to see how the (re)insurance industry fairs. Indeed, the Lloyd’s and London markets have been making notable strides to increase diversity within the sector. However, there is still a long road ahead.

Although the London Matters 2017 report showed that 41% of the London market’s employees are female, it also revealed that a measly 5% of executive directors in the London insurance market are women, compared with 21%, on average, at FTSE 100 companies.

And this disparity is clearly visible on a class of business basis.

Eames Partnership’s recent analysis of the talent within the London cyber underwriting market showed that just 31% of all underwriters were women, whilst just 13% of senior leaders within the space were female.

There was a comparable trend on the broking side, with just 24% of all London market cyber brokers being female. Similarly, just 15% of brokers within senior leadership positions were female.

This comes despite cyber being a nascent line of business and comprising a relatively younger talent pool. But there is some positive news, with the senior leadership statistics within cyber measuring favourably to more traditional classes and the wider London market.

Here at Eames Partnership, we’re proud of our diverse and inclusive team environment, which enables us to partner with our clients in providing a service uninhibited by unconscious bias.

If you are interested in learning more about our London market cyber and talent maps, finding out how we can help you with incorporating diversity and inclusion into your workforce or how we can help you develop other areas of your business,  please contact Matthew Eames at matthew.eames@eamespartnership.com or on +44 (0)207 092 3257.