A couple of years ago, we chose to accelerate our goal of achieving gender equality in our company by signing the Women in Finance Charter.

We believe all organisations, including ours, have a responsibility to demonstrate how they’re working towards their Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (ED&I) goals. We want to help drive change in the finance sector as a whole, not just in our own company.

Like India McWalters, Funding Options’ Operations & Platform – Project & Delivery Lead, we’re happy to see progress both within the sector and our own workplace:

“Having worked in the commercial finance sector myself for around 8 years, I’ve seen the industry rapidly become more and more gender diversified year on year.

Since we joined the Charter in 2019 I’m over the moon to have some seriously inspiring women join the Funding Options Leadership team.

Courteney Way and Akruti Amin are just two fabulous women who have inspired plenty of us since joining. Being a veteran at FO, this is a breath of fresh air!”

Akruti and Taisa

Women in Finance Charter – where did it begin?

The Government launched the Women in Finance Charter after it commissioned Jayne-Anne Gadhia, former CEO of Virgin Money, to lead a review into the representation of women in senior managerial roles in the finance industry.

Gadhia’s review revealed that in 2015, women made up just 14% of Executive Committees in the Financial Services sector.

In July 2021,  the Government published its Women in Finance Charter Five Year Review.

The good news is that the proportion of women has increased from 14% to 22% on executive committees across the UK finance sector, and from 23% to 32% on boards since 2016. Although progress has been made, the work of Charter is far from complete.

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