Insurance organisation Zurich has reported a 27.3% mean gender pay gap for fixed hourly pay as at 5 April 2017.
The organisation has reported its gender pay gap data for its two legal entities, Zurich Employment Services and Zurich UK General Services, in line with the government’s gender pay gap reporting regulations and ahead of the private sector submission deadline of 4 April 2018.
The gender pay gap reporting regulations require organisations with 250 or more employees to publish the difference between both the mean and median hourly rate of pay for male and female full-time employees; the difference between both the mean bonus pay and median bonus pay for male and female employees; the proportions of male and female employees who were awarded bonus pay; and the proportions of male and female full-time employees in the lower, lower middle, upper middle and upper quartile pay bands.
Zurich’s median gender pay gap across both legal entities for fixed hourly pay is 27.4% as at 5 April 2017.
Its mean gender pay gap for bonuses paid in the year to 5 April 2017 is 47.2%, and the median gender pay gap for bonus pay is 34.2%. Over this period, 95% of female employees received a bonus payment compared to 94.9% of male employees.
More than a quarter (29%) of employees in the highest pay quartile at Zurich are women, compared to 28% in the second quartile, 52% in the third quartile and 64% in the lowest pay quartile. In total 46% of the organisation’s total workforce are women.
Zurich attributes its gender pay gap to the fact that there are more men than women holding senior leadership roles, with fewer women progressing into higher paid technical or specialist positions, such as actuarial or underwriting jobs. Furthermore, the gender pay gap for bonus payments is influenced by the higher proportion of women at Zurich who work on a part-time basis or who take career breaks, with 27% of female employees taking up these options compared to 1% of male employees.
To address its gender pay gap, Zurich will undertake initiatives, such as its Early in Careers programme, Youth Skills programme and its Women in Finance Charter commitment, to encourage more women to consider and develop careers within the insurance industry. Zurich will also continue to advocate its Womens Innovation Network (WIN), which provides a forum to share ideas and best practice as well as creates equal career development opportunities, work to promote flexible working practices to all employees, offer organisation-wide mentoring to female employees at all career levels, and focus on reducing bias in recruitment and talent management processes.
These actions have been designed to correlate to Zurich’s three key commitments. These include to make careers at Zurich and in the insurance sector generally more appealing to women, to create a truly diverse and inclusive workplace, and to improve opportunities for career progression and flexible working.
Tulsi Naidu, chief executive officer at Zurich UK, said: “The gender pay gap is not the same thing as having equal pay, and we are confident that men and women in our organisation are paid equally for the same, and similar, jobs.
“We’ve calculated the figures in line with government regulations and, like many others in our industry, we have found that differences in average pay are down to several different factors. Generally speaking across financial services and in insurance specifically, women are under-represented in senior UK leadership roles and also in more highly paid technical and specialist roles, such as actuarial and underwriting. This has certainly had an impact on our results.
“We also see a greater proportion of women choosing to work part-time and taking career breaks; this also affects our gap results.”