Men are paid on average 34% more per hour than women across the UK banking sector, research has revealed.
Loan provider Tic Finance used the most recent gender pay gap reports published on the official government website by 49 UK banks and building societies to analyse the extent of the gender pay gap in the banking industry.
It found that almost half (45%) of staff employed by banks and building societies were women on the snapshot dates referred to in the reports.
However, 62% of employees in the lowest pay quartile were women while 72% of those in the top pay quartile were men.
Despite 72% of female workers in the industry receiving bonuses, marginally above the 71% figure for their male counterparts, the actual average bonus pay for men was 44% higher than for women.
Tic found that every bank whose gender pay report it analysed paid men a higher rate than women, with the smallest hourly wage gap reported being 16% by Monzo Bank and HSBC Bank paying men a 54% higher hourly rate than women.
Only 9% of individuals in the top pay quartile at HSBC Bank were women on 5 April 2020, suggesting the employer had the worst representation of females in top paid jobs of all the organisations analysed by Tic.
Paran Singh, lead financial advisor at Tic Finance, explained that despite pay gap reports being freely accessible to the public online, the data was often presented in a “confusing and unapproachable” way.
“This makes it difficult to understand the extent of the UK’s pay gap problem from first glance,” she said.
“A 34% pay gap is not anywhere near good enough, especially in an industry where 45% of employees are female. This is why we wanted to publish and distribute our findings, to paint a transparent picture of the extent of the UK’s urgent pay gap problem.”
A spokesperson for UK Finance, which represents the sector, said: “The banking and finance industry understands the vital importance of a fair and representative workplace.
“There is clearly more still to be done and, as well as publishing data, firms are taking a number of actions to address the gender pay gap. UK Finance and many of our members are signatories to the HM Treasury Women in Finance Charter, which commits firms to supporting the progression of women into senior roles and is aligned with the government’s aspiration of seeing gender balance at all levels in financial services.”
HSBC said its HSBC Bank entity only has 2015 employees and includes the Global Banking and Markets business which has a predominance of men in senior, higher-paid roles.
The banking giant added that its largest unit by headcount, HSBC UK, had about 10 times as many staff and a median pay gap of 20.2%, which it described as “more comparable to UK domestic peers”.