Financial services failing to narrow gender pay gap
Many firms have been revealed as having large pay disparities between male and female employees.
The nation’s financial services sector, renowned for its generous performance-related bonuses, has some of the biggest gaps in the remuneration of its male and female employees.
While the national remuneration gap for financial and insurance services is 26.1 per cent or $36, 537, and the base salary gap is 23.6 per cent or $27, 110, many firms have been revealed as having much larger disparities.
They include Credit Suisse (37.2 per cent and 42.8 per cent); UBS (35.1 per cent and 42.7 per cent); Barrenjoey (33.8 per cent and 42.5 per cent); Merrill Lynch (32.7 per cent and 41.8 per cent); Platinum (41.9 per cent and 41.1 per cent); Bell Financial (17.8 per cent and 41.3 per cent); Goldman Sachs (32.7 per cent and 37.2 per cent); Magellan Financial (31.2 per cent and 32.9 per cent); ING (36.1 per cent and 32.2 per cent); and Morgan Stanley (25.1 per cent and 48.2 per cent). Ord Minnett has a much more positve base median of -4.9 per cent, which favours women, although its overall remuneration of 43.4 per cent favours men.
Citigroup (25.1 per cent and 29 per cent) is close to the national level and the big four Australian banks also report comparable figures.
CBA sits at a gap of almost 30 per cent for both median salary and remuneration; Westpac is 27 per cent for base pay and 28.5 per cent for remuneration; ANZ is 22.7 per cent for base and 23.1 per cent for remuneration;.
Among the big four the best performer is National Australia Bank at 16.4 per cent and 18.8 per cent. But overall, 90 per cent of employers in financial and insurance services have a gender pay gap that favours men.
The Workplace Gender Equality Agency, which manages the data, says in industries with the largest reliance on bonus payments and overtime, the size and unequal distribution of bonus payments significantly increases the gender pay gap.
In transport, postal and warehousing, and electricity, gas, water and waste services, the size of these payments more than doubles the gender pay gap, according to the WGEA.
Helen Trinca
Companies’ gender pay gaps are available on the WGEA website: www.wgea.gov.au/data-statistics/data-explorer
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