Allica Bank’s 2024 gender pay gap report

The gender pay gap is the difference in earnings between male and female staff within a company. If the average salary is £20 an hour for women and £40 an hour for men, that organisation has a 50% pay gap. If everybody earns £40 an hour, the pay gap is 0%. 

Any company with 250 or more employees is legally obliged to report this information. From our perspective, this is just one part of our ongoing commitment to gender equity. 

Tracking this data gives us the power to change it. Publishing it creates a bond of accountability with our stakeholders and customers. 

We submitted our first ever gender pay gap report last year (2023-24) and I’m pleased to be publishing our latest data here.  

Allica’s gender pay gap: the headline statistics 

In a sentence: we’ve made some good progress, but we’ve got plenty more to make. 

Our pay gap data can be divided across three categories: overall pay, bonus pay and pay per quartile. The tables below provide a snapshot of each. 

Our overall pay gap 

We’ve reduced the average pay gap across both mean and median metrics. This is great news and something we’re pleased about, while knowing there’s still more work to do. 

In the space of a year, we’ve reduced the mean gap by 5.24% and the median by 4.62% (in absolute terms). I’m encouraged by this, but I know further progress will require more hard work and commitment. 

Our gender gap by pay quartiles 

We’ve closed the gap across three out of four pay quartiles and we’re really pleased about this. 

Just to note: these reflect gender distribution across pay scales, not the gender pay gap within each scale. 

The greatest changes have been in our upper (a 5.8% absolute improvement) and lower (by 5.4% absolute) quartiles, which feels like an important step. Narrowing the gap from both ends of the pay scale is the quickest way to make a meaningful impact. 

Still, the gaps are wider than we want them to be and we plan to keep bringing these figures closer to equal. 

Promotions have played a critical role in closing these gaps, with 12% of our female employees being promoted in this period. 

We’ve also implemented a Talent Review and Succession Planning Framework, which not only helps us recruit great talent but gives them a clear path for progression within the company. 

Our pay gap by bonuses 

Our mean pay gap for bonuses has increased. The median has fallen slightly. 

One of the main drivers behind this increase is that some senior staff had deferred bonuses from previous years. As a result, the numbers are skewed when seen in an annual snapshot. 

The bonus gap also reflects our gender differences in pay quartiles. Bonuses increase with seniority. This gap will reduce as our pay quartiles get closer to being equal - something we’re making progress on, as you can see, but need to continue improving. 

The challenges for Allica and the wider industry 

There are a few fundamental issues that we believe, if addressed, can unlock a big shift in the pay gap. These apply to Allica and the wider fintech industry. 

1. Broadly speaking, higher-paid roles have unequal talent pools. STEM is still male-dominated, especially in software development, which is the foundation of fintech. The numbers vary by source, but roughly one in five software engineers is female (we're pleased to say that Allica's female representation on our tech team is higher than this, at 32%). 
2. Our technology team has been growing fast, with many new recruits hired outside the UK. Our pay gap data only relates to UK employees, so it will never reflect the whole of Allica. 
3. We don’t report on bonuses paid out as shares. This, along with the continued deferral of bonuses, makes it hard for us to accurately report our pay gap by bonuses. 

How we’re addressing gender disparity 

Gender inequality is multi-faceted and deeply rooted across society. To properly improve our gender balance, we need to look across the whole business, as well as our industry and society as a whole. 

Addressing things within Allica is doable, changing society is beyond our direct control. 

We’ve mentioned a few initiatives already, but a fuller list of the steps we’ve taken to redress inequality at Allica and in fintech include: 

1. Using recruitment technology that removes unconscious bias from our hiring process 
2. Training our teams to spot and counter unconscious bias 
3. Introducing a Menopause Policy that supports peri-, post- and menopausal women at work and keeps them in the business 
4. Implementing our Talent Review and Succession Planning Framework 
5. Prioritising internal promotions 
6. Launching full pay for neonatal care 
7. Continuing to promote hybrid work in support of accessibility 
8. Increasing exposure and budget for our Diversity & Inclusion Squad 
9. Continuing to support the Women in Finance Charter, setting new gender balance targets having met our previous ones:
   

We’re pleased, but not satisfied 

The progress we’ve made is encouraging. The distance we still have to travel is clear. 

Our 2024 report validates the initiatives, policies and schemes we’ve launched, even if we’re still a way off from where we want to be. We’re not standing still and will be working on new ways to improve gender equity for the years ahead. 

We’re not resting on our laurels, but we’re happy to see positive signs of progress. 

As well as continuing to publish our annual gender pay gap reports in line with the government mandate, we’ll also keep sharing updates about this work on our blog. 

I wrote earlier this year about our continued commitment to gender equity, if you’d like to learn more.