At L&C, we're fully committed to building a more diverse and inclusive culture.
By developing our policies across recruitment, retention, promotion and training, we're actively working towards reducing our gender pay gap in the coming years.
As of March 2023 London & Country Mortgages Ltd (L&C) employs 928 at its offices in Bath, London, Newcastle and its virtual office. We’re publishing our gender pay gap report in accordance with the Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations. Important to note is the gender pay gap is not the same as equal pay. Equal pay is the requirement that all men and women who carry out the same or similar jobs are paid the same. We are confident that men and women are paid equally for doing equal jobs across the organisation.
The table below shows our mean and median pay and bonus gap on 5th April 2022 as well as comparisons to our 2021 data.
Difference between men and women | ||||
2021/2022 | 2020/2021 | |||
Mean | Median | Mean | Median | |
Pay gap | 24.4% | 13.7% | 14.5% | 16.7% |
Bonus gap | 73.0% | 83.9% | 54.7% | 56.0% |
Difference between men and women - 2021/2022 | ||
Mean | Median | |
Pay gap | 24.4% | 13.7% |
Bonus gap | 73.0% | 83.9% |
Difference between men and women - 2020/2021 | ||
Mean | Median | |
Pay gap | 14.5% | 16.7% |
Bonus gap | 54.7% | 56.0% |
L&C’s median pay gap is lower in 2021/2022 at 13.7% than the national average of 14.1% (1). This is also a decrease from our 2020/2021 median of 16.7%, and over 6 points lower than the financial service average of 19.8% (2). On the contrary the bonus gap has increased, the median increased from 56.0% in 2020/2021 to 83.9% in 2021/2022.
The underlying reason for the pay gap is like most of the financial services industry, we have a higher proportion of men within our business working in higher paid senior, technical and sales roles. In the lower quartile of the business, however, there are more females; specifically in this lower quartile there are 103 men to 138 women. Most of our part-time female employees work in lower paid, minimal bonus or no bonus administration, though this is changing on an annual basis.
In late 2021 and early 2022 we began recruiting more employees, and while the number of male and female employees increased, we were still recruiting more male colleagues. Our male employees increased by 85, while female employees increased by 51. The number of male employees in the Upper Quartile also increased by 35, while the number of female employees decreased by 1. This correlates with the median bonus gap.
1. Source: Gender pay gap in the UK: 2022, Office for National Statistics, 26 October 2022
2. Source: FCA pay and bonus gap data 2022, Financial Conduct Authority, 20 July 2022
This trend is highlighted in the following charts, which shows that the proportion of men continues to be higher in three pay quartiles, and the % of women has increased in 2/4 quartiles. However, the lower middle quartile shows a reduced proportion of women in 2022, now 61% male to 39% female. Similarly to the upper quartile, the number of women decreased by 3 (from 98 to 95) while we recruited more males in those areas (148 to 110).
The charts above show that the number of both male and female colleagues receiving a bonus increased in 2021/22. This reflects the change in the remuneration approach for our administrative colleagues, which are populated by a greater proportion of female employees. In 2018 we introduced a revised rewards package that included the consolidation of previous bonus awards into salary along with a quarterly performance scheme that enables colleagues to achieve salary (and therefore pensionable) increases rather than one off bonus payments. In 2020 we updated this scheme and increased salaries again. This was with the view of aiding financial stability.
As we have explained in our previous annual gender pay gap reports, we remain committed to ensuring that everyone has an equal chance to fulfil their career aspirations and potential at L&C – whatever their gender. We continue to work on building a more diverse and inclusive culture. To do this, we are focusing on the following key areas:
As per previous reports, L&C remains on a journey and accepts that it will take time to achieve a significant impact on our gender pay gap but remains committed to doing so to create a fulfilling and inclusive working environment for all our current and prospective colleagues.
David Gray, Chief People Officer
Note: We confirm that our data is accurate and has been calculated according to the requirements of The Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017.