Inclusion and Diversity Action highlights

The Action Plan was endorsed by the Quilter plc Board and delivery is overseen by the Inclusion and Diversity Executive Committee, chaired by Quilter’s Chief Executive Officer.

Quilter’s I&D Action Plan has been in place for over 18 months and good progress has been made against the 3 core goals set out in July 2022. Specifically:

1. To evolve our culture and bridge the gap between minority and majority groups by focusing on the differing needs of all our people.
2. To grow our reputation as a responsible employer that attracts, develops, retains, and fully engages all of the diverse talent across our organisation.
3. To increase the representation of underrepresented groups at all levels and meet the targets set for our Senior Leadership team.

We continue to track positively against the 5 strategic areas which underpin our I&D Action Plan and continue to make progress in diversity data disclosure with positive completion rates, exceeding industry norms across many areas. We also continue to meet Board and senior leader diversity targets in line with the Listing Rules, Parker Review and FTSE Women Leaders Review.

In March 2023, we were awarded a Gold Standard by LGBT Great Financial Services, a recognition of our excellence in LGBT+ inclusion. We achieved this by submitting our Inclusion Index Benchmark Tracker (iiBT) Which measures our performance across five pillars: Strategy, Culture, Brand, Policy, and Team. The Gold standard requires a high level of competency across the majority of these pillars, and we are proud to have met this criterion and aim to retain this standard each year.

Our goals

We use targets to drive our desired improvement in the diversity of our senior leadership. In 2023, our target was to achieve 40% female representation and 5% ethnic minority representation in this community. As of December 2023, Quilter had achieved 43% female representation against a target of 40% within senior leadership roles (defined as Exco & ExCo-1, excluding PA’s & Business Managers). In addition, Quilter has achieved it’s ethnicity target ending the year at 9% against its target of 5%. To further reinforce our long-term goals, we have set out new minimum targets for the end of 2027 to have 13% of our senior management population be from ethnically diverse backgrounds.

Women in Finance Charter

Quilter is proud to be a signatory of the Charter which requires firms to work together to create more gender balance at all levels across financial services firms. It is a voluntary initiative, led by the Treasury, aimed at promoting best practice.

We signed the Charter to help us realise our commitment to creating an inclusive culture and accelerate our efforts to build a more diverse organisation. Like other financial service firms, despite roughly equal proportions of male and female employees overall, we have fewer women than men in senior management positions. Signing the Charter will help address this imbalance.

When we signed up to the Charter in 2018, we had 33% women senior management. As of 30th September 2023, we had 40% female representation in senior management which is the target set for 2025. As of 31^st December 2023, we had 43% female representation in senior management. As we work to retain these medium-term minimum goals, we will continue to set stretch targets for the executives that will drive and support diverse representation across our senior management.

We set an ambitious target to achieve an 80% completion rate across seven areas including gender identity, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, religion, and socio-economic background. We have achieved positive completion rates that exceed industry norms across all areas. We have achieved strong data completion rates for new starters (98 – 99%) thanks to changes we have made to the hiring process. We have underachieved in disability disclosure have made the necessary steps to see an increase over the next year. We are proud of these levels of disclosure and the trust our people place in us to use this information in building and retaining a diverse workforce and going beyond regulatory requirements.

Data disclosure response rates

The data above is as at 31 December 2023 and staff are asked to contribute their data via an electronic portal. For detail on the diversity of our Board directors see page 54 of the 2022 Report & Accounts.