TSB fails to hit gender balance target by 2020

TSB bosses will have their bonuses reduced after the bank failed to hit its target of the amount of women in senior roles by 2020.

The bank had originally planned to increase the proportion of women in senior roles to 45-55 per cent by 2020, but have failed to do so. The Women in Finance Charter, was signed by TSB, which is a pledge between the Treasury and financial services to try and rectify the gender balance in the city.

TSB has told the Treasury it will likely take another five years to hit this target. In May 2019, TSB did appoint its first female chief executive, Debbie Crosbie, still it has actually seen a decrease in the amount of women in senior roles from 41 per cent to 38 per cent.

TSB said:

TSB takes gender diversity very seriously … and although we are making progress through initiatives such as our Promotion Ready and Aspiring Women programmes, we have revised our target. Internally, we are tracking interim targets as our ambition is to deliver on these targets before 2025.

Mark Brown, the general secretary for the Affinity trade union, said:

Gender diversity is not something you can switch off when things get difficult. For a challenger bank like TSB, ensuring that women are fairly represented in senior management roles should be a central part of its strategy especially when women make many of the consumer spending decisions.

For the new chief executive officer, Debbie Crosbie, to abandon TSB’s target of having at least 45% of senior manager roles held by women by 2020 and pushing it out to 2025 is deeply offensive. She’s well and truly pulled up the ladder on her female TSB colleagues.

TSB also announced in November 2019 which 82 branches it intends to close to save 3100 million by 2022, which the bank said will put 370 jobs at risk.

 

 

 

 

Darius is the editor of HRreview. He has previously worked as a finance reporter for the Daily Express. He studied his journalism masters at Press Association Training and graduated from the University of York with a degree in History.