Our commitment

Our CEO, Bill Winters, signed a statement of support for the United Nations Women Empowerment Principles, in April 2018. These seven principles underpin the work we are already committed to which supports women in the workplace, marketplace and community.

The Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs) is a joint initiative of UN Women and the UN Global Compact. They are a set of seven principles for business, offering guidance on how to empower women in the workplace, marketplace and community:

• Principle 1 – Establish hi-level corporate leadership for gender equality
• Principle 2 – Treat all women and men fairly at work – respect and support human rights and non-discrimination
• Principle 3 – Ensure the health and safety and wellbeing of all women and men workers
• Principle 4 – Promote education, training and professional development for women
• Principle 5 – Implement enterprise development, supply chain and market practices that empower women
• Principle 6 – Promote equality through community initiatives and advocacy
• Principle 7 – Measure and publicly report on progress to achieve gender equality

In 2016, we signed the UK HM Treasury Women in Finance Charter to further progress the gender agenda and work together to build a more balanced and fair industry.

The pledge includes:

1. Having one member of our senior executive team who is responsible and accountable for gender diversity and inclusion
2. Setting internal targets for gender diversity in our senior management
3. Publishing progress annually against these targets in reports on our website
4. Having an intention to ensure the pay of the senior executive team is linked to delivery against these internal targets on gender diversity

As part of our commitment to transparency, we have been publishing gender data annually for over 10 years. We will continue to publish progress annually against our gender targets as we believe this will help to increase accountability and drive the pace of change across the industry.

Since signing the UK HM Treasury Women in Finance Charter in 2016, we’ve seen a positive trend of women taking up senior leadership roles, increasing from 25% to 32% at the end of December 2022.  This takes us closer towards our pledge of having women occupy 35% senior leadership roles in 2025.

We’re proud of the progress that we have made to date but recognise there is more work to do.

We recently earned the EDGE certification for our work on Gender Equality. This globally recognised accreditation is a demonstration of our commitment to gender equality and we are really proud to be the first financial institution in Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and Sri Lanka to receive this.

In 2023 we were included in the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index for the eight year in a row.