At the Diversity and Inclusivity Finance Forum (DIFF) Annual Review, a panel was held on how DE&I had improved over the last 10 years.
Moderator Bharat Sagar, ambassador at large at AE3 Media, asked Sonya Matharu-Coxill, founder of the Mortgage Atelier, about entering financial services in 2016.
Her boss at the time told her she would struggle, as she had “many things working against her”, being a person of colour, a woman and young, because people would “not feel comfortable trusting you with their biggest financial transaction”.
She said this was not the pep talk she was looking for; she was looking to gain confidence, but instead “got given a few complexes”.
Matharu-Coxill said: “That was then. 10 years on, I don’t have those conversations anymore… but just because I don’t experience those conversations anymore, does that mean it doesn’t happen? Through my conversations with other people starting out in the industry, it does still happen.”
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Signey Wager, managing director at L&C Mortgages, said when he first joined the sector, one of the first events he attended was Mortgage Solutions‘ Senate. He said this was a good data point, because when he thought about “walking in that room, all those years ago versus today or last year, there’s a significant difference”.
He said events like DIFF and general curiosity about others showed that things had moved on, but not everyone runs the same race. Wager said one metric could be viewed as a sign of success, but it needed to be measured against other characteristics, like disability and sexuality.
Wager said: “We’ve made significant progress when you think about where we were, to where we are today, but the question is, if we turn around and look behind us, who’s coming next?
“Is there enough retention? Have we done enough? And can we look at ourselves and really believe that we’ve moved on in the way that we wanted to?”
Wager said there were “some roads to still travel, but we should always applaud where we’ve come from and understand that we need to get there quicker,” saying 5% of progress should not take another 10 years.
Clare Beardmore, director of mortgage club at Legal & General (L&G), said going further back than 10 years, when she started her career, it was “super difficult” as a young mum with just four months’ maternity pay, full childcare costs and a career she did not want to give up.
By the time she had her second child, her salary essentially went towards nursery fees, and she asked herself why she continued, but said she “did it for the long game”.
Beardmore said, considering this, she was not surprised that things had improved because it made it easier to get into the workplace.
However, she said it was not shocking that female CEOs still only made up around 8% of FTSE350 companies, because she was not sure there was enough done to support women over the span of their lives to keep them at work. Beardmore suggested it was time to “go again” to push things further.
She said keeping women in their careers was “starting to be talked about”, as more people were comfortable speaking about conditions like menopause than they might have been 10 years ago, but said: “I don’t think enough has done. It shows, because 8% of the FTSE350 companies are [led by] women. That is the age I’m at now and I’m not surprised because life does change again,” naming worry, anxiety and brain fog as symptoms that impacted her work.
William Lloyd-Hayward, group COO at Brightstar Financial, joined the industry in 2012 without any obvious role models to look up to as a gay man. On a personal note, he went on his first date with a man a decade ago and said it was only more recently that he became confident talking about who he was and who he loved.
Now, he and his husband are going through the adoption process and Lloyd-Hayward said their legal rights were “next to non-existent”.
“We’re not afforded any leave, unless we’ve got good employers, to spend the 20 days of sessions with counsellors, therapists, training – that’s all at the employer’s discretion,” he added, saying this made him feel there was still a way to go with progress.
Further, outside of work, Lloyd-Hayward said the number of countries where it was illegal to be gay had not decreased by much over 10 years, so while he could acknowledge the progress made for others, he felt he was still in the infancy of change.
When asked if there had been improvements in feeling accepted at work, Lloyd-Hayward said “maybe, a little” as when he got married in 2021, people referred to a “wife”, and he would think twice about correcting them to avoid embarrassment.
“We’re still at the point where the onus is on us as individuals to go: ‘I don’t want to take up this challenge because I don’t actually want to make you feel uncomfortable’,” Lloyd-Hayward said.
He said it was becoming more common for people to ask about a “partner” now, which avoided discomfort.
Leading by example
The panel was asked if more people were willing to act as allies, and Matharu-Coxill spoke about working with Sarah Tucker, CEO of The Mortgage Mum, saying Tucker probably did not realise she was a role model to Matharu-Coxill.
“She definitely kept me in the industry, but I don’t even think she realised at the time,” she added.
After what her first boss said, Matharu-Coxill was not sure she wanted to stay in the sector. It was only after coming across Tucker online that she reached out to her for a role at The Mortgage Mum, saying Tucker’s visibility was important.
“It doesn’t have to be anything big and major, just showcase who you are, what your values are… all of that will attract people who see themselves in it,” she said.
Wager said being classed as a role model was an “awkward thing” because it felt like a heavy burden when really, it just required being authentic.
“Once you start putting people in boxes, it becomes a real challenge,” Wager said, adding that people with privileges were most able to make changes and it required the work of everyone to penetrate echo chambers.
Beardmore said there were “great females [in] really senior roles” in the sector, and she never felt that being a woman held her back, but rather, life circumstances.
“I’ve never been male, so I struggle to say how hard a male has to work,” she added, but said “something isn’t quite right” if women were still underrepresented.
Wager agreed that it was hard to compare and the most that could be done was to look at someone with a similar career path.
When asked where the panel wanted to see the conversation around DE&I in another 10 years, Wager said he wanted it to no longer be something that needed discussion.
