Insurer gender pay gap reports flag senior staff imbalance and part-time job problem

With International Women’s Day taking place this week (8 March 2025), it feels timely to review insurers’ gender pay gaps – a topic that has grown in importance since statutory reporting requirements around these figures were introduced in April 2017.

Despite this ongoing regulatory focus, the insurance sector stubbornly remains one of the worst offenders, continuing to record yawning differences between male and female remuneration.

The government requires UK employers with 250 or more staff to report and publicly publish gender pay gap figures annually, based on a snapshot date. This data includes the mean and median gender pay gap as a percentage, based on hourly pay, as well as bonus differentials and the ratio of men and women across four pay quartiles.

There is not a set date for collecting and publishing gender pay gap figures – some firms use the calendar year as a basis, while others prefer to report in line with the tax year, for example.

According to an October 2024 bulletin from the Office for National Statistics, the average median gender pay gap across all industries was 13.1% in April 2024 – meaning that female employees were paid 13.1% less than their male counterparts.

However, across many of the top 10 insurers recorded in Insurance Times’ Top 50 Insurers 2024 report – published in October last year – median pay gaps between male and female employees reached up to 29.1% in the most recent reporting periods.

The picture is even worse for bonuses, where the difference in bonus payout between men and women employed at some top 10 insurers can be as high as 69%.

So, why is the gender pay gap so large at big UK insurers and what are these companies doing to close it?

Senior staff imbalance

Among the largest general insurers in the UK, the worst offenders in terms of median gender pay gaps are Allianz Holdings’ LV=, which recorded a 29.1% pay gap for 2022/23, AIG UK with a 29% median gender pay gap in 2023 and Ageas, which reported a 28% median gender pay gap for 2023.

These numbers widened year-on-year for both LV= and Ageas, by 1.9% and 1.4% respectively. AIG UK managed to close its median gender pay gap by 1% between reporting periods.

Ageas UK chief people officer Sian Myers said: “While our gender pay gap has decreased since we started reporting eight years ago, it has remained at similar levels to 2022.

“We are confident this is not an equal pay issue and [that] the main driver of the gap is because we have fewer women in management, senior and technical roles and a higher proportion of women in more junior positions.

“We are committed to reducing this gap through initiatives such as our Women in Insurance talent development programme, training our hiring managers in inclusive recruitment and providing a Technical Heroes training programme to support technical development, which are all leading to encouraging signs of progress.”

At the other end of the spectrum, the top 10 insurer with the smallest median gender pay gap is Admiral, which paid women 6.6% less than men in 2023 – only a 0.1 percentage point increase on 2022.

An Admiral spokesperson told Insurance Times: “We’re committed to ensuring that at Admiral, progression is not slowed or haltered by any barriers related to gender.

“We continue to focus on investing in and strengthening initiatives that support better female representation across all levels – particularly in traditionally underrepresented areas like science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Stem) – directing our efforts towards talent attraction, development and retention.”

The second best big insurer for gender pay equality is Zurich, which recorded a median gender pay gap of 15.5% between the sexes in 2024 – down from 17.4% in 2023.

Mitigating actions

Although the reasons for gender pay gaps are typically varied, a common thread across insurance firms’ pay gap reports appears to be that more men than women are employed in better paid leadership and technical positions.

Another reason for larger than average gender pay differentials is because the insurance sector lacks part-time job opportunities, which more women than men tend to utilise after starting a family to support childcare and caring responsibilities.

In response to these drivers, insurers are taking action.

For example, from March 2019, Zurich UK offered all of its available job roles on a full or part-time basis. This saw a quarter of female staff adopt a part-time working pattern, noted Steve Collinson, the company’s chief human resources officer.

Since the launch of this initiative, the number of Zurich UK staff working part time quadrupled, Collinson continued.

Aviva, meanwhile, reported a median gender pay gap of 22.7% for 2023 – down from 25.1% in 2022.

According to Jonathan Briggs, Aviva’s group head of talent acquisition, diversity and inclusion, the insurer has sought to close its gender pay gap by introducing equal parental leave from November 2017 – which includes six months of fully paid time off – as well as paid carers’ leave, which launched in October 2017.

The ABI encouraged insurers to take a hands-on approach to tackling gender related pay gaps.

Its spokesperson told Insurance Times: “Efforts to improve gender representation remain a priority across businesses.

“Our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Blueprint stresses the importance of firms publishing a narrative to explain their pay gap, as well as an action plan to address it, alongside their data.

“Many of our members support gender inclusive initiatives that encourage transparency, such as the Women in Finance Charter and our Making Flexible Work campaign.

“We were encouraged that our latest data collection showed that 77% of respondents have set targets for [the] representation of women at senior manager level.

“However, the work is far from over and we will continue to work with our members and stakeholders to boost gender representation across the sector.”

The issue of gender-based pay inequality in large UK insurers is a serious one – and, for some firms, a problem that is getting worse rather than better.

Insurers’ efforts to reduce pay and bonus gaps between staff of both sexes performing comparable work are to be applauded, but the sector still has a long way to go.