RBS Pays Women 37% Less on Average Than Male Staff at Bank

(Bloomberg) -- Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc pays its female staff on average 37 percent less than men at the bank, joining Lloyds Banking Group Plc and Standard Life Aberdeen Plc in revealing an acute gender imbalance between employees under new disclosure requirements.

Women at RBS receive average bonuses that are 64 percent lower than male employees, the bank said in its annual report on Friday. Lloyds pays its female staff around a third less than men. Both firms blamed the disparity on the disproportionate number of men in senior roles. A day earlier, Barclays Plc said female staff at its corporate and investment bank were paid 48 percent less than male employees, a differential described as “shocking” by Nicky Morgan, U.K. Treasury Committee chair.

The gender pay gap "is not where we want to be," RBS Chief Executive Officer Ross McEwan, said in a call to reporters Friday. "We need to have more females in senior roles and we set some ambitious targets in the next three years to improve it and that’s what affects the gender pay gap."

Men make up about 70 percent of the employees in RBS highest-paid quartile, mirroring the proportion of women in the bank’s lowest-paid quartile.

The lenders are among the first major banks with British operations to disclose their gender pay gaps under new requirements. As of Friday fewer than 1,200 companies have provided the information out of an expected total of around 9,000. The government has written to companies reminding them of their obligation to report by April 4 with the Equalities and Human Rights Commission warning of potential sanctions for firms that delay disclosure.

Standard Life Aberdeen on Friday revealed a 42 percent average pay gap at Standard Life and 34 percent at Aberdeen. The data, compiled before the companies merged last year, shows a gender bonus gap of 70 percent at both entities. Lloyds said Friday that its bonus gender gap was around 65 percent.

"The world has a problem getting women through the ranks and to the top, and that is particularly true in finance where participation rates are dismally low," said Tom Kirchmaier, a research economist at the London School of Economics.

RBS wants to have 30 percent of its top management teams in each business area staffed by women by 2020. On an aggregate basis, 37 percent of its 800 most senior roles are already occupied by women.

"The bank has got to increase the number of senior women, but getting gender balance at all levels is really important," said RBS’s Head of Inclusion Marjorie Strachan. "Financial services companies have been predominantly male at the top of the house, and female dominated at the bottom for too long. We have more work to do in finance than in other sectors to address that."

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