Women in Finance Charter

The Charter is a financial services commitment to achieve greater gender balance and inclusivity across the financial services sector in Ireland. Signatories of the Charter commit their organisations to improving the number of women in management and board level positions to achieve better gender balance and a more inclusive working environment. Further information is available on the Better Balance website  

Our commitment to the Women in Finance Charter is underpinned by our targets and a range of actions that we have put in place to support women to take up more senior roles, which is just one element of our diversity, equity and inclusion agenda.

2025 update on progress

We continue to grow as a business and we have seen an increase in females progressing to more senior role since we signed the Charter. Since signed the Charter in 2022 our female senior management population has grown from 20% to 29% but we want to do more.

In early 2025 we decided to increase our target to a minimum 40% of women in our senior management population to reflect our growth ambitions and our desire to attract, develop and retain diverse and talented colleagues united by a common purpose. In support of this challenging ambition, we will be introducing new initiatives in addition to those in place already which are detailed below.

Diversity, equity and inclusion are vital for a successful business, and we recognise that everyone is different, and value our people for the individual contribution they make. We know that diversity in our business enhances our performance and helps us to grow to give. We encourage our people to use their experience, ideas and their unique character in their work.

Fairness and equity are already important principles that are built into our culture, and the way we work, we support all our employees in reaching their potential.

We do however see that there are some opportunities for us to enhance our approach and here are some examples of the actions in our plans:

• We have introduced inclusive hiring training and are improving our interview process to objectively assess all candidates.
• We are reviewing our candidate communications to make sure they’re clear and succinct, to remove jargon and set out the real requirements of the role.
• Our commitment to diversity is reflected within our target culture model and Code of Conduct, as well as on our careers pages.
• Supported by the Board, we established a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Working Group with clear strategic goals. The focus continues to be education and raising awareness of broader diversity, which includes a calendar of events throughout the year and sharing colleagues’ powerful and unique stories.

• We provide development and stretch challenges to enable our female talent to reach their potential.
• Our dedicated Women’s Network group offers peer support, allyship and personal development opportunities.
• We ensure 50:50 gender representation onto our leadership development programmes including the Benefact Leadership Development Programme and Benefact Emerging Talent Programme.
• Our flagship Women in Leadership programme is specifically targeted at developing senior female leaders to reach their potential.
• Our Inclusive Leadership programme ensures all our managers, Executive Committee and Board lead in inclusive ways
• We support people to grow their careers through our General Insurance and People Leaders Academies, as well as supporting attainment of professional insurance qualifications.

• We continue to monitor gender within our performance moderation, pay and bonus processes.
• We benchmark all our roles every year to ensure that we are paying an appropriate market rate for each job.
• We undertake a range of measures to uphold high standards of fairness in the ways we reward our people.
• We proudly support parents through our parental leave benefits through things like competitive maternity, adoption, paternity leave and pay.

• Ensure the continued excellence and employee awareness of our suite of flexible working and family-friendly policies.
• Support our employees to build their own resilience enabling them to better manage both workplace and personal challenges.

There is no simple answer to creating a better gender balance in our organisation. So the solution will also require a range of actions taking effect over the medium term. We remain committed to providing an inclusive place to work where everyone belongs.