Citi, Lone Bank to Detail Pay by Gender, Starts to Close Gap

(Bloomberg) -- Citigroup Inc. has narrowed the pay gap between men and women in its global workforce in the last year, the company said.

Female employees now make 27% less than men do, an improvement from 29% a year ago, according to a memo to employees from Sara Wechter, the bank’s head of human resources. The company also found that, among its U.S. employees, people of color now earn 6% less than their white colleagues, an improvement from 7% a year ago.

“We have much more work to do,” Wechter said in the memo. “Our work to address both measures is continuous and the pace of change is likely to vary from year to year.”

While many of its major competitors have offered “adjusted” pay gap analyses in response to shareholders and U.K. regulators, Citigroup is one of the few major U.S. companies to offer such a blunt disclosure, which measures median total compensation.

The “adjusted” pay gap analysis compares the compensation of men to women and accounts for factors such as job function, level and geography. On that basis, women globally are paid on average more than 99% of what men are paid at Citigroup.

The bank has said that the difference between the two measures shows the need to increase the number of women and minorities in top roles, from assistant vice presidents to managing directors. It has said it will increase representation for those levels to at least 40% for women and 8% for black employees in the U.S. by next year.

The firm has made progress toward that 2021 goal, Wechter said. She also said it is close to achieving its goal of having its analyst classes across the bank be made up of 50% women and 30% people of color.

“When you see the raw pay gap number getting better like you did this year, it really comes down to representation across the senior ranks of the institution,” Wechter said.

Citigroup has focused on addressing the gender pay gap at the company and beyond. It introduced an ad campaign last year featuring children of the bank’s employees. One ad captures the kids’ reactions when they learn about the gender pay gap and the unequal opportunities that exist for women across different industries.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jenny Surane in New York at jsurane4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael J. Moore at mmoore55@bloomberg.net, Philip Gray

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