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 January 2022 London & Country Mortgages Ltd (L&C) employs 1,127 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. An important thing to point out is that 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 2021 as well as comparisons to our 2020 data.
Difference between men and women | ||||
2020/2021 | 2019/2020 | |||
Mean | Median | Mean | Median | |
Pay gap | 14.5% | 16.7% | 25.1% | 26.5% |
Bonus gap | 54.7% | 56.0% | 45.1% | 41.6% |
Difference between men and women - 2020/2021 | ||
Mean | Median | |
Pay gap | 14.5% | 16.7% |
Bonus gap | 54.7% | 56.0% |
Difference between men and women - 2019/2020 | ||
Mean | Median | |
Pay gap | 25.1% | 26.5% |
Bonus gap | 45.1% | 41.6% |
L&C’s median pay gap is higher in 2020/2021 at 16.7% than the national average of 15.4%1. This decreased from 2019/2020 as it was at 26.5%. On the contrary the bonus gap has increased, the median increased from 41.6% in 2019/2020 to 56% in 2020/2021.
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 93 men to 114 females. 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 2019 and 2020 we deliberately paused our adviser recruitment to evaluate the investment we had made in technology. In 2021 the adviser recruitment resumed, however this did not change the proportion of male to female in adviser roles much.
Across the whole business the proportion of female employees stayed more or less static in 2021. When taking into account our relevant employees there were 517 males to 314 females in 2021 and in 2020 502 males to 302 females but there were limited opportunities to join the company to work in roles with greater earning potential.
1. Source: Gender pay gap in the UK: 2021, Office for National Statistics, 17 January 2022
This trend is highlighted in the following charts, which show that while the proportion of men is higher in three pay quartiles the % of women has continued to increase year on year in the majority of the quartiles. The upper middle quartile however has a reduced proportion of women in 2021, now 77% male to 23% female.
The charts above show that the number of female colleagues receiving bonus awards continued to reduce in 2020/21. 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, HR Director
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.