Foreword

One of our key strategic objectives as an organisation is to unlock potential by ensuring entrepreneurs can access the finance they need, regardless of where and who they are. If we truly wish to support our customers and achieve this goal, it is vital that we apply a similar philosophy to diversity, equity and inclusion within the British Business Bank.

Because we believe strongly that diversity, equity and inclusion must all work together for each to succeed in their own right, we are committed to nurturing this work continuously across our business.

That means putting people and culture at the heart of our organisation, empowering diverse talent through challenging work that makes a difference, and by ensuring diverse perspectives are being well represented within our own business.

Gender pay

The year in review shows our 2023 median gender pay gap has improved to 16.2%, 4.4 percentage points lower than in 2022. However, our median bonus gap has substantially increased to 43.9% compared to last year. While progress has been made against the gender pay gaps published last year, there remains significantly more to do.

Our analysis shows that while we have progressed to a more balanced proportion of men and women across our business and continue to achieve our headline target of ensuring 50% female representation at our Executive level, we still have notable gender imbalance in middle management and other senior roles.

The work needed is not only in addressing our gender representation at these levels but at various touch points throughout our people and culture strategy. This has led us to initiate a review of our overall reward, resourcing and talent strategies, as well as a review of our overall employee value proposition. We are committed to actionable changes that allow us to track progress on our DEI goals broadly (as well as on our gender pay gap) and to be accountable for this change to all our stakeholders.

Ethnicity pay

The year in review shows our 2023 median ethnicity pay gap is 13.7% with a mean ethnicity pay gap of 15.1%. Our median and mean ethnicity bonus gaps are 28.0% and 36.4% respectively.

We have broken the data down across our colleagues from a Black, Asian, Mixed or Multiple Ethnic groups and Other Ethnic Minority backgrounds, in addition to White colleagues, to create greater understanding of any specific barriers that are preventing people from meeting their full potential. Our ethnicity pay gap is at its widest for our Black or Black British colleagues, who are still disproportionately underrepresented at senior levels.

Due consideration

Our analysis is not considered in isolation. We have specifically garnered feedback and insight from our employee resource group, Stronger Together, our Colleague Forum, and feedback from across all of the Bank’s teams. Working with external experts, we have also been learning from our customers’ journeys, bringing them closer to the heart of what we do and how we do it.

To improve our gender and ethnic diversity, equity and inclusion, we will continue to:

• Analyse our recruitment processes to ensure they are fair and free from bias from beginning to end.
• Test and calibrate our talent, succession and performance management process for fair and unbiased review, as well as representation against the wider organisation population
• Test our annual remuneration review, progression and development for differences based on gender and ethnicity.
• Develop our capability in relation to pay gap reporting, adopting an intersectional view of both our gender and ethnicity pay gap reports to understand whether the intersections between characteristics have any impact on headline figures.

Our Board and Executive team are fully committed to our diversity goals and inclusion initiatives. They recognise that this is an ongoing and continuous effort with the upside benefiting not only our own colleagues but also our customers. I look forward to engaging further on this very important agenda, and to delivering improvements in our performance.

Louis Taylor
CEO, British Business Bank