Women in Finance Charter

JM Finn is a signatory to the Women in Finance Charter, a government led initiative designed to encourage gender balance at all levels across financial services firms. By signing up to the Charter, firms:

  • indicate their commitment to support the progression of women into senior roles;
  • set targets and implement the right strategy for their organisations to achieve those targets; and
  • publicly report on progress to deliver against their targets to support the transparency and accountability needed to drive change.

women in finance charter

Goals

Our medium term, high level goal is to achieve 30% female representation within senior management, against our December 2019 level of 23%. This is a challenging goal and progress towards and beyond it will be highly beneficial to the firm

Having signed the Women in Finance Charter in 2019 we have implemented a number of goals that put the issues right at the heart of the business.

Initiatives that have been implemented that we hope will help us address the imbalance in the long term, include:

  1. Work toward 30% representation of women in senior management Aim for 50/50 gender split for applicants to IM Trainee scheme
  2. Review and formalise our hiring policy to broaden the pool of talent available to us
  3. Offer coaching pre- and post-maternity leave for all employees
  4. Offer at least one specific leadership coaching session per year for women
  5. Initiate a mentoring programme

Annual Update: 2022

When we signed up to the Charter in 2019 our level of female representation within senior management was 23%.  We set ourselves a challenging, yet what we felt at the time was an achievable, goal of increasing this to 30% by 2021.

To help us meet our goals we highlighted five additional measures to be implemented to help us progress in the right direction.  Whilst we have met these five latter goals, we have been unable to meet our original and primary target with female representation at senior management remaining at 23%.  This is very disappointing and has led us to even closer analysis as to why and how we achieve future targets.

We do feel that within a smaller organisation, progress and change, which can take time to implement and see the benefits of, can be undone by a small number of individual personnel changes, either planned or otherwise. We have therefore pushed out our target date of 30% female representation to 2030, which we feel is significantly more realistic to achieve.  We have also implemented an interim target of 25% female representation by 2025 to help us remain focussed on our longer term goal.

Action taken

  • All hiring managers now receive ongoing training to help address unconscious bias and reinforce the benefits of having a diverse work force. The training was initiated in 2019 and is refreshed on an ongoing basis.
  • We ran a very successful “Confident Communication for Women” CPD and networking event, for women from across the business.  This brought together management colleagues, to share and enhance skills and experience.
  • We have updated our family policies to encourage returners from parental leave.
  • Coaching for pre- and post-maternity is offered to all staff. Feedback suggests this is invaluable in helping people set and manage their own, and their colleagues, expectations.
  • Our mentoring program, which was rolled out to the whole firm in 2019 and again in 2021 has continued to be a great success.  We now have a comprehensive program involving staff across the business.
  • A hybrid working policy is now in place as we look to create an environment in which our employees can work with an appropriate balance between office time and homeworking.
  • Thanks to broadening the awareness of the investment manager trainee scheme, we have reached a much wider audience and received applications from a more diverse group of applicants than ever before.
  • We plan to continue with our successful Young Women in Work program. This program is designed to help us engage with a younger audience about career choices and change the perception of the financial services industry at the grass roots level.
  • We continue to be active in industry-wide initiatives designed to promote the success of women in the industry in the belief that these initiatives can deliver excellent role models for others.
  • We continue our 5 year association with Tammy Beaumont as a brand ambassador for the firm. Tammy is a world cup winning England and Kent cricketer and we hope her engagement with us will encourage younger women to explore the career options available to them within the wealth management industry.
  • We have sponsored a number of initiatives designed to develop our brand awareness among a female audience, particularly at the school age level, with the long term aspiration that more females will engage with the industry later in life.
  • We have engaged with GAIN (girls are investors), a charity committed to inspire girls to get into the investment industry.