Gender Pay Gap Report 2022

Background

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.

Our gender pay gap

The table below shows our mean and median pay and bonus gap on 5th April 2022 as well as comparisons to our 2021 data.

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 proportion of men and women in each pay quartile

2021-22

2020-21

The proportion of men and women receiving a bonus payment

2021-22

2020-21

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.

Actions to close the gap

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:

1. Last year we implemented an enhanced Maternity & Paternity Policy to attract and retain more women, particularly in sales and senior management roles. In the advice section for example, 75-80% of colleagues are male. This new policy allows enhanced pay for those who choose to take up the benefit. This aids females to feel more financially stable and gives them more choice in the hope that they will return to their position after their maternity leave.
2. Colleagues have taken part in Diversity and Inclusion training provided by Flick Learning. This covered a myriad of D&I topics including unconscious bias, LGBTQIA+, Inclusive Language and Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging.
3. Introduction of a Menopause Policy to ensure that all colleagues who are suffering from symptoms of the Menopause are protected and allow those going through Menopause to make variations to their working hours, changes to their working location or have reasonable office adjustments i.e having access to desk fans or making adaptations to their working day as is needed. This has also acted to deepen knowledge across the business of the difficulty caused by Menopause.
4. Introduction of free sanitary products in bathrooms to support all colleagues during a menstrual cycle and to remove the risk of period poverty for our colleagues.
5. Development and implementation of Flexible Working Policy to promote a better work/life balance for all colleagues. We have also moved to a hybrid business model which in itself provides more flexibility. This is to help our colleagues manage their work/life balance and meet their family commitments, while continuing to meet the needs of our customers. We also operate a more relaxed approach to working times and patterns than we have in the past.
6. The business is focusing on Diversity & Inclusion as part of the We Belong project. The dedicated We Belong team are formed from various demographics and from right across the business hierarchy and are represented by male, female, and non binary attendees. The drive of the project is to ensure that every single colleague feels that they belong at work, and can achieve their true potential at L&C; regardless of their life experience. We are reviewing & revising our recruitment policies & procedures with an aim to attract a more diverse pool of candidates alongside this we are updating all role profiles across the business to attract a more diverse workforce.
7. Embed D&I Champions across the business to provide an internal support network for those with similar life experiences. Those D&I Champions represent support for LQBTQIA+ colleagues, Gender Identity topics, and Return to Work following maternity/paternity leave.
8. We are exploring gender neutral bathrooms in our new office locations to develop inclusivity and to avoid misgendering.
9. Encouraging the use of pronouns to avoid misgendering and ensure that everyone can be their true self.
10. We continue to embed our company values of being Supportive, Connected, Dynamic and Respectful through all our recruitment, colleague training sessions and our recognition scheme. On a quarterly basis our colleagues identify and reward their peers who display our values and behaviours through nominations. We will continue to work on ways to enable us to evaluate and recognise performance on both the outputs, e.g. what has been delivered, as well as inputs, e.g. how a colleague’s behaviour has influenced their performance.
11. Continuing to review and adapt our reward policies and practices to recognise the different skills and behaviours required by a company of our size. In 2022 L&C introduced a banding scheme in various areas of the company which enables our employees, to be able to reach the next level of their career. Employees need to hit their KPIs at 100% 8 months out of the 12. If this is done consecutively an employee can be promoted to the next banding in 8 months.
12. Identify colleagues who display potential for the future – L&C is always looking to upskill its employees and support them in their career journey. We have budgets to support our staff with learning new skills or assisting them with gaining new qualifications.
13. Enhancing our line management capability to enable all those in management/supervisory capacity to support their team members in developing their skills and progressing within L&C. April 2023 begins with a full sweep of Line Manager Training covering topics such as discrimination, diversity, the Equality Act 2010 and recruitment. This will provide all managers with the tools and techniques to develop their knowledge and understanding.

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.