An overview of our diversity pay gap report

Our Diversity Pay Gap report includes our gender pay gap, which is a statutory requirement, as well as our voluntary reporting on our ethnicity pay gap and disability and long-term health condition pay gap. We report on all of these pay gaps as part of our commitment to being an inclusive employer. 

Gender pay gap

Women make up 51.6 per cent of the overall number of employees at the PPF.

Our mean gender pay gap is at its lowest since we began reporting on gender pay in 2017, at 15.8 per cent, however our median gender pay gap has increased slightly from 16.6 per cent in 2022 to 17.5 per cent in 2023.  

Our gender pay gap exists because our highest paid roles in areas such as investment and technology are overrepresented by men. Another reason our progress on closing the gender pay gap feels slow is that we are not yet seeing the impact of new appointments, such as Michelle Ostermann, our new Chief Executive, who joins us in April 2024. Our low level of staff turnover also contributes to our slow progress on closing our gender pay gaps

Having previously met our Women in Finance Charter target of having 40 per cent female representation in of senior management, we set ourselves a new target  to have 45 per cent representation by December 2023. We have sadly fallen short of this target by 2 per cent and currently have 43 per cent representation. Our small senior leadership team means that even one role change can have a big impact on representation, but we remain positive that we’ll continue to make progress in the right direction.    

Ethnicity pay gap

While ethnic minority representation across the organisation has increased year on year, the overall proportion of ethnic minority employees was 26.3 per cent in September 2023, meaning that we did not meet our goal of 30 per cent ethnic minority representation across the organisation by December 2023.  

Our ethnicity pay gap is unacceptably high and we are disappointed that our median ethnicity pay gap has increased from 14.3 per cent in 2022 to 15.9 per cent in 2023.  

Ethnic minority employees are underrepresented in our investment team, an area of the organisation that commands higher pay and bonuses. Attracting diverse talent is a challenge in our industry and we continue to work with Investment 20/20 to help talented young people to gain access to the industry. We also support the Diversity Project, an initiative that champions a more inclusive culture in the savings and investment industry, and the 10,000 Black Interns Programme, run by the 10,000 Interns Foundation. 

The reason for our ethnicity pay gap is that most of our senior leaders are white. We acknowledge that we need to adapt our approach in order to achieve greater ethnic minority representation among senior managers.

During the year April 2022 to March 2023, 8.7 per cent of ethnic minority employees and 7.9 per cent of white employees were promoted.

Disability and long-term health condition pay gap

26 per cent of our employees identify as having a disability or long-term health condition.

The median disability and long-term pay gap has improved from 2.0 per cent in 2022 to -2.4 per cent in 2023. 

Our success in recruiting and retaining people with disabilities and long-term health conditions has been recognised by the Disability Confident Scheme. This year we retained our Disability Confident Leader status following an external validation process. 

Our Chief People Officer and interim CEO, Katherine Easter, said: “Our targets set out in the Diversity Pay Gap Report help us to make sure we have a diverse workforce; one that reflects the areas where we work and members we support.  

“We remain focused on investing in future leaders by bringing in more people from under-represented groups into junior roles and nurturing and promoting our internal talent. Although we may not see a positive impact on our pay gaps in the short term, we’re confident these actions will help change the makeup of our organisation and even our industry over time. Hearing from people with a range of different backgrounds and experiences supports us all in innovating and managing risk.

“The Board, Executive Committee and senior leadership team remain passionate about finding ways to ensure that we deliver on the commitments we made in our Diversity & Inclusion Strategy to reap the benefits different perspectives bring.”