Our purpose is to place the power of good advice into more hands. To underpin this, we believe it is essential to have an inclusive culture, where colleagues with diversity of background and thought are able to support and advise a wide range of clients.

The Financial and Professional Services sectors still have challenges with diversity, particularly in senior roles, which has resulted in them making slower progress than other sectors with measures like the Gender Pay Gap. This is particularly acute in Financial Services.

It is worth noting that a high Gender Pay Gap does not mean that colleagues are paid unfairly. It could mean that there are more men occupying more senior, higher paid roles. The reality is that it is harder to impact diversity in senior roles in these sectors in the short term due to a number of legacy factors such as:

• The Financial and Professional Services sectors have traditionally attracted a higher number of men. It is becoming more diverse, but this is still the case.
• Higher paid senior roles are usually underpinned by expertise developed over a long career and through established client relationships.
• There is low colleague turnover in senior roles.

Through our Inclusion & Diversity (I&D) strategy, we are undertaking a wide range of activities which are focused on improving diversity not just in our business, but the wider Financial and Professional Services sectors. Please see the 'Our strategy' section below for more details.

The gender pay gap is defined as the difference in average earnings (mean and median) between men and women, regardless of the seniority of their role. Unlike equal pay, which refers to paying men and women the same amount for the same or similar work. At Evelyn Partners we are confident that the checks we have in place ensure we pay colleagues fairly (equal pay for the same or similar work).

Gender Pay Gap

We are closing our GPG year-on-year, with significant progress made in the 2023 reporting year. Most companies focus on the Median Gender Pay Gap (Mean GPG), as it removes the impact of extreme outliers giving more consistent and comparable reporting from one year to the next. Our Median GPG, which calculates the median average pay by gender, is 22.3% for 2023, down from 27.7% in 2022. We are really encouraged by the drop of over 5% between 2022 to 2023.

Please note that having a gender pay gap does not mean that colleagues are paid unfairly, but rather because more men occupy more senior, higher paid roles. This is because of legacy factors described earlier in the report.

Median Gender Pay Gap comparisons

Like us, most companies are due to publish their GPG for 2023 in early April 2024, so at point of publishing we only have 2022 data to compare to.

Given that our business is a unique combination of Financial and Professional Services, our Median GPG results tend to sit in-between these two sectors. Professional Services sector generally has greater diversity than Financial Services, which has a positive impact on our Group GPG.

As a result, we compare very well with Financial Services, particularly our direct competition. For example, Rathbone’s Median GPG was 35%, Brewin Dolphins’ 33% and Quilter’s was 31%. However, we do have a slightly higher Median GPG than Professional Services companies, as demonstrated in the table below.

This year we have attempted to separate out our Financial Services GPG and Professional Services GPG, please note these figures are approximate and illustrative only* as we are not able to split central functions accurately between to the two business units. As shown in the table the approximate figure for the Financial Services GPG 29.4% and Professional Services GPG 9.8%. both comparing well with companies in their respective sectors.

*Financial Services plus all of central functions or Professional Services plus all of central functions

Gender Bonus Gap

In addition to our Gender Pay Gap, we report our Gender Bonus Gap, pictured below. We report on the median bonus gap, which we are closing year-on-year. In 2023, the median bonus gap was 44.4%, down from 52.3% the previous year. The median bonus gap is the difference between the median bonus pay of women and the median bonus pay of men, expressed as a percentage.

As with the median pay gap, this does not mean that colleagues are paid unfairly. It reflects that more men occupying more senior, higher paid roles. This is because of legacy factors described earlier in the report.

Evelyn Partners gender mix

As part of our GPG reporting, we publish the mix of women and men at different pay levels (pay quartiles) across the organisation. Pay directly equates to the seniority of roles within the organisation. As a result of our I&D strategy, we have increased the percentage of women in the most senior roles (higher pay quartiles) year-on-year.

The percentage of women in our upper pay quartile increased by just under 1% from 25.6% to 26.4% year-on-year.

We are committed to continuing to make progress on increasing the diversity of colleagues across the organisation, particularly at a senior level. However, bearing in mind the previously referenced legacy factors, we must also ensure that we are realistic in our ambitions.

2023 representation

Gender Pay Gap % of colleagues paid a bonus

As part of the GPG we report on the percentage of women and men paid a bonus. For 2023, the number of females who were awarded a bonus was 79.0%, for men, the number was 77.7%. This demonstrates the fairness of approach we have in respect to reward within Evelyn Partners.

The Women in Finance Charter is a pledge for gender balance across financial services. The Charter, in short, asks financial services firms to commit to implement four key industry standards:

• having one member of the senior executive team who is responsible and accountable for gender diversity and inclusion;
• setting internal targets for gender diversity in senior management.
• publishing progress annually against these targets; and
• having an intention to ensure the pay of the senior executive team is linked to delivery against these internal targets on gender diversity.

What are we doing to improve gender diversity?

Evelyn Partners is committed to working towards greater female representation within our industry, particularly within senior management roles.

When we signed up to the Charter in June 2022, we had 26% female representation in senior management and our target was 30% by December 2025. As of September 2023 (our latest annual update), we have 28% female representation in senior management. We believe we are on track to meet our Charter target of 30% by our deadline of December 2025.

Initiatives to support this target include:

• ensuring candidate shortlists have high levels of female representation;
• committing to talent development programmes which have strong female representation and investing in our leaders of the future;
• continually reviewing working practises to ensure they are not a barrier to progression for women within our business;
• keeping our benefits (particularly parental leave and benefits) under regular review to ensure they are not a barrier to attraction or retention of women in our business; and
• ensuring our culture is inclusive so all colleagues can thrive within the workplace.

We believe it is important to have an independent and expert measure on how much progress we are making in relation to our I&D strategy. I am pleased that in 2023 we have been awarded the silver accreditation reflects our commitment to embedding workplace inclusion and diversity, and the additional improvements we have made as a business since our last accreditation in 2022 where we achieved bronze status. This is an impressive result, and I am incredibly proud to see how far we’ve come, but there is still more we can all do to create an inclusive culture.

The standard required us to evidence what we were currently doing and looks for companies to demonstrate that inclusion is integral to their organisation. We have received action focussed feedback on how we can continue to progress on our journey, informing future planning. We will continue to undertake regular reviews of our I&D strategy with the aim of achieving gold accreditations in the future.

Creating an inclusive culture is central to our I&D strategy, which aims to ensure that people of all backgrounds, life experiences, preferences and beliefs are recognised and respected as individuals and valued for the different perspectives they bring. We want all people to be given equal opportunity to contribute to business success and be their true selves, regardless of their background.

Colleague Pulse surveys, the feedback from which directly informs our I&D strategy going forward.

What are we doing to tackle gender inequality?

Inclusion and Diversity Committee, colleague Networks Groups, and Inclusion Champions

Our Inclusion and Diversity Committee, established mid-2020, continues to evolve to support our strategic goals, along with our colleague Network Groups, who are empowered to arrange inclusion events and activities. We now have several Network Groups bringing together underrepresented groups for support, safe spaces and allyship:

• Gender Equality
• Proud
• Social Mobility
• Able
• RaRE – Race, Religion and Ethnicity

Our Inclusion Champions support the execution of the I&D strategy across our office footprint, ensuring all colleagues, no matter where they are, have an opportunity to be involved.

Recruitment

We have focused on attracting a diverse range of candidates by upgrading our recruitment website to better reflect our commitment to I&D and attract more diverse candidates. We have a target of 50% for diverse candidate pools and we regularly review our job descriptions to ensure we're using inclusive language.

Training

Our induction for new joiners focuses on our purpose and values, ensuring all colleagues understand our culture and how important I&D is within our business. A wide range of training and development is available to our colleagues to support an inclusive culture, including interview skills and leadership development, to name a few.

Women in Leadership

Attracting and retaining female colleagues is key to maintaining a talent pipeline into senior roles. In 2023, we continued our Women in Leadership Series in partnership with our Executive Committee for female colleagues to network, share their views and to hear from external senior leaders. Topics covered range from managing your career to imposter syndrome and influencing.

Allyship

We have emphasised the importance and role of allyship from male colleagues in our communications. For International Women’s Day this year we hosted a session with author Joy Burnford, open to all colleagues. She drew on real life examples of the role allyship will play in achieving gender equality.

Family Leave

We offer 26 weeks enhanced and shared Maternity Pay, as well as Adoption Leave so colleagues are supported when choosing to have a family. We offer hybrid and flexible working and monitor colleagues' return to work closely so we can provide support.

Community

We understand that increasing diversity in senior roles and closing our GPG is not something we will achieve overnight. As such, we are investing and supporting charities that encourage females and underrepresented groups from all backgrounds to consider careers in Financial and Professional Services.

We participate in industry initiatives such as 10,000 Black Interns, GAIN (Girls Are Investors) and We Can Be, to enable our role models to showcase their stories and mentor young people through internships, who typically would not be exposed to these types of careers.

Our corporate charity partner Impetus works with organisations that support disadvantaged young people to transform their lives, offering our colleagues volunteering opportunities with youth employment charities.

All UK firms with 250 or more employees are required to report their gender pay gap analysis on an annual basis using the following metrics:

• mean gender pay gap
• median gender pay gap
• mean bonus gender pay gap
• median bonus gender pay gap
• proportion of men and women receiving bonuses
• proportion of men and women in each pay quartile

The data provided here relates to the twelve months preceding 5 April 2022.

In the interests of transparency, we are going beyond the mandatory requirements set out in the Government’s gender pay gap reporting legislation and once again publishing figures covering all of Evelyn Partners c3,500 colleagues.

Following internal restructuring and rationalising of employing entities, most of our colleagues are now employed by Evelyn Partners Services Limited, which means we only have one entity that employees over 250 colleagues.