Female fund manager bonuses up to 70% below men’s
Early gender pay gap filings reveal extent of discrepancy
Women working at UK asset managers receive bonuses that are as much as 70 per cent below their male colleagues in revelations that will pile pressure on a sector that has been branded “pale, male and stale” to tackle its wide gender pay gap.
According to initial data that companies have filed to comply with new UK rules, salaries for women working in the fund industry are up to 40 per cent less than those paid to men, while the gap on bonuses is up to 72 per cent.
Fund managers linked the difference in pay to the lack of senior women in their organisations, as well as more women working part-time.
Bev Shah, founder of CityHive, a network for women in finance, said it will be interesting to watch how these numbers change over the years.
“It’s not a surprise to anyone that the gender pay gap numbers for asset management are how they are. You just need to open your eyes and walk around the investment floors to see how the numbers will look,” she said.
Standard Life Aberdeen, the merged company that has created the UK’s largest-listed asset manager, said on Friday men were paid on average 34 per cent more than women at Aberdeen, and 42 per cent more than women in Standard Life.
“The truth of the matter is we need to do better,” said Keith Skeoch, co-chief executive of SLA. “We have to work harder and put programmes in place to improve gender and diversity across the piece.”
Axa Investment Managers reported an average bonus gap of almost 72 per cent, and an average hourly pay rate gap of 30 per cent.
Andrea Rossi, chief executive of Axa IM, said the investment house was taking “meaningful action to address its gender pay gap”. Women accounted for 36 per cent of Axa IM’s management board and executive committee.
“We need to do more,” Mr Rossi said. “We know that attracting more women into our workforce and supporting their progress into senior roles is vitally important; not only because it is the right thing to do but also because it’s essential to the commercial success of our business.”
Under new rules, companies across the UK with 250 employees or more have to report their gender pay gap data ahead of an April deadline.
Franklin Templeton had an average bonus gap of almost 69 per cent, as well as an average pay gap of 28 per cent. Aviva Investors’ average pay gap for 2017 stood at almost 24 per cent, while its average bonus gap was 46 per cent.
A poll of more than 500 FTfm readers last year found that 80 per cent believed transparency over the gender pay gap would improve equality for women in the fund industry.
Fewer than 10 per cent of respondents said they felt women in the fund industry were paid the same as men for similar roles.
Fidelity International, which has an average bonus gap of 69 per cent and a salary gap of 23 per cent, said it was “committed to fairness and equality, and closing the gender pay gap is a key priority for our business”.
“It is worth being clear this is not an issue of equal pay, we are confident of our approach to equal pay and regularly carry out audits across the firm in this respect,” Fidelity said.
Last month, the UK government wrote to some of the largest asset managers in the country to urge them to take steps to improve gender equality in their companies. This included Amundi, Pimco, Vanguard, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, JPMorgan Asset Management and UBS Asset Management.