Women in Finance

Women in Finance — 2020 Report

At Marsh and Guy Carpenter, collaboration is the soul of our enterprise. The diversity of our people is a fundamental pillar of our culture and, we believe passionately, integral to our success. We believe that diverse backgrounds and experiences foster greater innovation and achievement—not only for the business, but also for our individual colleagues and clients, and the communities we work in.

Marsh and Guy Carpenter are proud to be a signatory of the Women in Finance Charter. As part of our commitment to the Charter, our goals are:

• To achieve at least 25% female representation in our senior management population by 31st December 2023.
• To achieve a year on year 50/50 gender split in our early careers population, including our graduate and apprentices programmes.
• To ensure recruitment searches for senior roles Senior Vice President grade and above—incorporate gender diverse candidate populations.
• To link the achievement of diversity and inclusion targets to the overall business strategy and personal goals of our Executive Committee. These targets are to be assessed and measured as part of the year-end performance and compensation review.

This is the first year that we are reporting on the combined Marsh, Guy Carpenter and Marsh & McLennan UK Corporate group. The extension of our submission will allow us to be further reaching in our commitment to gender diversity and align our different entities to one common goal.

We have seen a nominal decrease of 0.1% in our senior female representation during 2020, resulting in 20.8% of our senior management population now being female. This has been driven primarily by the substantial change to the population we are now reporting on, following the integration of colleagues after the completion of our acquisition of JLT on 1 April last year.

We continue to make progress towards achieving our goals.

Our achievements to date include:

• Our recruitment strategy and early careers intake are focused on ensuring the diversity of our talent reflects the broader population and clients we work with. In 2020, 38% of our Marsh and Guy Carpenter graduate recruits were female, our graduate scheme and intake closed earlier than expected, due to COVID-19. (Our previous intake was 55% female at Marsh and 71% female at Guy Carpenter.)
• We are continuing to focus on developing a future female leadership pipeline to build on the progress we have made, including:
  
  
  • Undertook a full review of Marsh's UK Emerging Female Talent pipeline and their development plans—with 41% of female Vice President grade colleagues overall being identified as high performing talent.
  • Identified female talent globally and put robust career development plans in place to support their ongoing development and achievement of their career aspirations at Guy Carpenter.
  • 50% of our Marsh UK Managing Director promotion nominations in the 2020 submission were female.
  • Partnered with the ISC to pilot two high performing female specific talent development programme this year for our Marsh UK emerging talent pipeline.
  • Our Marsh UK female representation nomination is 70% for Marsh & McLennan's 2021 Global Diversity Leadership Programme, which focuses on developing female, black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME), and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) talent.
  • Female representation on the current cohort of Guy Carpenter's Global Leading for Impact Programme is 65%.
• Our Gender focused Colleague Resource Groups (CRG), whose mission is to support the advancement of women's careers by creating a gender inclusive workplace—where gender is not a barrier to a fulfilling career or personal aims—continue to play a hugely impactful role in the organisation through various initiatives including:
  
  
  • Colleague support: Delivered professional development and awareness raising events.
  • New Joiner support: CRG engagement at all our 'Welcome to Marsh' induction roundtables.
  • Education & Awareness: Virtual Film Club launched to promote inspirational female role models and stories, as well as regular Female Real Role Model Lunch & Learn sessions.
  • Client Event: Annual event focusing in 2020 on 'Beyond Lockdown—a time for positive change in workplace gender equality.'
  • Community Charity: Marsh Community Fund award to The Girls Network, as well as supporting the mentoring programme.
  • Community engagement: #MotherWorks photography exhibition which celebrated the contributions and achievements of working mothers from diverse backgrounds and all walks of life.
  • Partnerships: Contributing members to a number of external networks in the financial services industry.
  • Culture: Leading Inclusively training scheduled for all Marsh UK people managers to support a more diverse and inclusive business and culture.
  • Town Halls: A series of panel discussions across all regions globally dedicated to advancing the conversation around D&I and enabling colleagues to share their personal experiences.

Chris Lay, CEO of Marsh UK & Ireland and a member of Marsh Ltd's and Jelf Insurance Brokers Ltd Executive Boards, and James Boyce, CEO of Guy Carpenter Global Specialties and member of Marsh Ltd and Guy Carpenter & Company Ltd Executive Board, are our senior executive team members responsible and accountable for gender diversity and inclusion within our organisation.

We are making good progress as we continue to support greater gender parity across our organisation, yet recognise there is much work still to be done. As such, our mission is to ensure all our colleagues reach their own full potential and build a culture of mutual respect, dignity and diversity that benefits our colleagues, clients and communities, and helps drive wider industry change.