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The imbalance in financial resilience between men and women in the UK is reflected in the insurance industry, which lags behind other sectors for female representation at the top, says the chief executive of the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII).
The proportion of female executive directors in the UK insurance industry stands at just 5%, in comparison to the FTSE 100 average of 21%, according to data from The London Market Group and The Boston Consulting Group.
Meanwhile, women in the UK face a significant pension deficit compared to their male counterparts, which is exacerbated for divorced and separated women. At age 65-69, the average woman’s peak pension wealth is £35,700, one fifth of an average man’s pot, research from the CII’s Insuring Women’s Futures initiative reveals.
“Somewhere along the line there is a massive imbalance in financial resilience between men and women, and we have got a major imbalance in female representation in the insurance and wider financial advice profession. Call me old fashioned, but to my mind there is a possibility that there is a connection between those two things,” Sian Fisher, CEO of the CII, told Insurance Business.
Fisher credited a number of initiatives within the insurance industry and the wider financial services sector with having created tangible change in the last few years.
“From what I’ve seen, and I’ve been in the market for 30 years, in the last five years there has been a major increase in focus and activity around diversity generally, but gender in particular,” the chief executive said.
In the insurance industry, Fisher credited the work of Lloyd’s CEO Inga Beale in initiating the Dive In Festival as having “created a very positive dialogue around the whole subject matter.”
In the wider UK financial services sector, the Women in Finance Charter, a government-backed pledge for gender balance across financial services, as well as the 30% Club, a campaign to achieve a minimum of 30% women on FTSE-100 boards, “have put metrics around an issue which people wanted to ignore.”
Fisher also pointed to the global UN HeForShe Programme, which she said the insurance profession has been a supporter of, and the gender pay reporting legislation which came into effect last year.
“All of those things collectively have focused on the issue, put uncomfortable metrics around it, and they’ve demanded that something be done about it,” she said. “I think that’s what’s made the difference in the last five years, compared to probably the previous 25 years.”
Join Insurance Business in London on October 29 for The Women in Insurance Summit, which will bring together some of the biggest names in the industry to address the key challenges faced by women in the UK insurance sector. Speakers include Sian Fisher, UK General CEO Karen Beales, Chubb’s Head of Diversity and Inclusion for Europe Eurasia and Africa, Louisa Lombardo, and many more of insurance’s most senior women.
