Affinity Capital’s Women in Finance Charter targets

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Leading organisations across the UK have made a pledge to support gender diversity in the financial services industry by signing the Women in Finance Charter.

The HM Treasury initiative requires firms to formulate a strategy for achieving greater diversity within their organisations, particularly at the senior and executive levels. Signatories agree to:

• Appoint a senior executive member in charge and accountable for gender inclusion and diversity;
• Publish annual progress reports for HM Treasury's website;
• Establish internal targets for gender diversity at senior levels; and
• Agree to an intention to link senior executive team salaries to their performance in hitting gender targets.

Below, we set out Affinity Capital's targets for meeting our Women in Finance Charter obligations.

Affinity Capital and the Women in Finance Charter

Affinity Capital was among the first signatories to the Women in Finance Charter, and we are committing to various actions that will help support gender diversity within our industry.

We are a small independent boutique firm that operates in the niche space of independent analysis and trading of structured investments. It's important to note that we are already an all-female company and we do not intend to scale our business any further, so our targets are not about hiring more women. For more information on our people, please click here.

Affinity is also committed at director level to continually reassess the ways in which the business can provide a flexible working environment for men. One of our targets is to make more effort to understand and promote their needs in the workplace and move towards a gender-neutral society for the future.

Instead, Affinity Capital pledges to promote gender diversity by:

• Appointing Emma Davidson, CEO and Director of Affinity Capital, as the senior executive member responsible for gender diversity and inclusion;
• Providing a flexible working environment to give our female employees the best work-life balance possible;
• Offering opportunities for personal and professional growth as the business goes from strength to strength; and
• Acting as an inspiration for women in the industry by showing how an all-women firm can succeed in a male-dominated industry.

More specifically, our diversity targets are to:

• Ensure that at least 75 per cent of our senior management team remains female
• Ensure that at least 50 per cent of our shareholders are female
• Support and mentor at least one woman to strive higher and take on a more senior position
• Publish our progress against these and other targets annually.

Since its inception, Affinity Capital has strived to promote gender diversity within financial services, and we're proud to be a part of a government initiative designed to tackle the issue on a national scale.

Affinity Capital: Linking executive pay to performance

One of the Women in Finance Charter terms is an agreement to link senior executive team salaries to the success of hitting gender diversity targets.

However, we don't currently have intentions to scale the business and as an all-women firm, it's not possible to set diversity targets until we hire again. In the meantime, we support our existing female staff through competitive pay, flexible working agreements and an emphasis on work-life balance.

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