Transparency data

UK Export Finance: gender pay gap report 2022 to 2023

Published 26 March 2024

1. Gender pay gap

This report is published in line with Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties and Public Authorities) Regulations 2017  which came into effect on 31 March 2017 and require organisations with 250 or more employees to publish their gender pay gap data annually.  Published data should include mean and median gender pay gaps; the mean and median gender bonus gaps; the proportion of men and women who received bonuses; and the proportions of male and female employees in each pay quartile. 

The gender pay gap (GPG) shows the difference in the average pay between all men and women in a workforce. If a workforce has a particularly high gender pay gap, this can indicate there may be a number of issues to deal with, and the individual calculations may help to identify what those issues are.

The GPG is different to equal pay. Equal pay deals with the pay differences between men and women who carry out the same jobs, similar jobs or work of equal value. It is unlawful to pay people unequally for the same work because they are a man or a woman.

This report sets out the figures in more detail and what we are doing to close the gender pay gap in the organisation.

2. Gender make-up of the department

As of 31 March 2023, UKEF had 521 employees, of whom 45% identified as female.  This represents a 1% increase from the 2022 report and a 7% increase from the 2021 report.

6.33% of UKEF employees were graded Senior Civil Servants (SCS); of these 33% identified as female, this was an increase from 28% in 2022.

The proportion of female employees at UKEF has increased steadily over the last seven years and the department set a target to have 45% of its employees as female by 2024.

2.1 Impact over the last 7 years

	16/17	17/18	18/19	19/20	20/21	21/22	22/23
Number of employees	264	305	321	340	398	495	521
% female	36%	38%	39%	37%	38%	44%	45%
% of employees SCS	4%	6%	5.30%	6.18%	6.78%	5.86%	6.33%
% of SCS are female	20%	24%	29%	29%	33%	28%	33%

3. Analysis by grade

Year	19/20		20/21		21/22		22/23
	Male	Female	Male	Female	Male	Female	Male	Female
AA / AO	4	5	4	3	2	1	2	1
EO	28	21	22	24	22	41	28	35
HEO	31	23	38	33	43	43	36	45
SEO	63	36	77	49	82	63	69	64
Grade 7	48	20	55	22	73	36	90	49
Grade 6	26	14	31	13	35	25	39	30
SCS1	10	5	12	7	15	6	18	8
SCS2/3	5	1	6	2	6	2	4	3
Total	215	125	245	153	278	217	286	235

3.1 Analysis of employee gender by year

Year	19/20	20/21	21/22	22/23
Male	215	245	278	286
Female	125	153	217	235
Total	340	398	495	521

4. UKEF’s gender pay gap

UKEF uses Civil Service grades ranging from Administrative Assistant (administrative level grade) to Senior Civil Servant (executive level grade). Grades vary according to the level of responsibility that staff have. Each grade has a set pay range with pay gaps in between grades.

All recruitment and promotions are undertaken on the basis of Fair and Open competition in line with the Civil Service recruitment principles, furthermore, all applications are anonymised at the initial sift stage.  To ensure a robust process, where possible the interview panels for recruitment and promotion consist of a balanced gender split.

In 2022/23 54.8% of promotions within UK Export Finance were female, this compared to 47.3% in 2021/22.

• Mean pay gap (ordinary pay): 11..9%
• Median pay gap (ordinary pay): 16.4%

4.1 Ordinary pay: trend over the last 7 years

	16/17	17/18	18/19	19/20	20/21	21/22	22/23
Mean pay	15.97%	15.25%	12.23%	13.90%	13.00%	14.20%	11.90%
Median pay	16.26%	12.22%	11.97%	13.50%	15.60%	18.30%	16.40%

The 2023 mean GPG data has highlighted that for delegated grades (AO to HEO) that there has been a marginal swing and that the mean GPG is now positive towards females.  It should be noted that to address the GPG UKEF had equalised pay for AA to EO grades by introducing a spot rate of pay.

Whilst UKEF’s mean GPG has reduced in the last 12 months, there has been a slight widening of mean pay for grades SEO and above.

4.2 Mean and median pay for 2023

Grade	Male	%	Female	%	Total	Mean (M)	Mean (F)	Median (M)	Median (F)	Mean	Median
AA	1	100%	0	0%	1	£13.31	N/A	£13.31	N/A	N/A	N/A
AO	1	50%	1	50%	2	£14.37	£14.53	£14.37	£14.53	-1.08%	-1.08%
EO	28	44%	35	56%	63	£17.38	£17.56	£17.19	£17.40	-1.02%	-1.20%
HEO	36	44%	45	56%	81	£19.51	£19.82	£18.97	£19.70	-1.56%	-3.81%
SEO	69	52%	64	48%	133	£25.84	£24.65	£25.15	£24.18	4.60%	3.87%
G7	90	65%	49	35%	139	£30.65	£29.10	£30.65	£28.92	5.05%	5.65%
G6	39	57%	30	43%	69	£43.35	£41.18	£42.59	£41.02	5.00%	3.67%
SCS1	18	69%	8	31%	26	£55.38	£50.57	£55.16	£48.99	8.68%	11.17%
SCS2	3	50%	3	50%	6	£89.95	£69.12	£79.21	£67.34	22.29%	14.99%
SCS3	1	100%	0	0%	1	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Total	286	55%	235	45%	521

As a government department UKEF must operate within the parameters detailed in the annual Civil Service Pay Remit guidance, whilst UKEF will adopt these proposals, where possible it is UKEF’s ambition to try and close the GPG further across all of its grades.

5. Bonus pay

UKEF’s performance awards were paid as a set value depending on grade and performance level.

• Mean pay gap (bonus pay): 23.2%
• Median pay gap (bonus pay): 20.3%

5.1 Bonus pay: trend over the last 6 years

	16/17	17/18	18/19	19/20	20/21	21/22	22/23
Mean pay	22.36%	20.57%	24.68%	23.70%	13.10%	27.70%	23.20%
Median pay	7.80%	25.09%	31.06%	8.70%	9.00%	19.70%	20.30%

5.2 Percentage of men and women paid a bonus

• Male: 75.87%
• Female: 74.04%

6. Analysis by grade

6.1 Bonus by grade and gender

Grade	Male			Female
	No bonus	Bonus	Total employees	% rec’d bonus		No bonus	Bonus	Total employees	% rec’d bonus
AA / AO	1	1	2	50%		N/A	1	1	100%
EO	18	10	28	36%		14	21	35	60%
HEO	10	26	36	72%		13	32	45	71%
SEO	17	52	69	75%		19	45	64	70%
Grade 7	16	74	90	82%		6	43	49	88%
Grade 6	4	35	39	90%		8	22	30	73%
SCS1	2	16	18	89%		1	7	8	88%
SCS 2/3	1	3	4	75%		0	3	3	100%
Total	69	217	286	75.87%		61	174	235	74.04%

Two of the SCS cohort were not eligible for a year-end award and two SCS1’s were promoted within the performance year, therefore they qualified for awards as Grade 6.

UKEF had 20 new employees join the department in February and March 2023 therefore, in line with the rules relating to performance awards, whilst they were employed as of 31st March 2023, they would have not been eligible for any bonus awards.

In addition to annual performance awards; for non-SCS staff UKEF also recognises outstanding employee contributions and small awards are made throughout the year.

With regards to UKEF’s performance awards (bonuses); payments are deferred, therefore, for the purposes of the 2023 GPG report, performance awards paid in July 2022 relate to employee’s performance in 21/22.  Performance awards are pro-rated if an employee has not completed 12 months service or if they work part-time.

Of the 488 employees (this excludes SCS) 441 employees were eligible for annual 21/22 performance awards which were paid in July 2022 and fall within the remit of the 2023 GPG report.  Of the eligible employees 98.33% received an award, this equated to 99.54% of female employees compared to 99.26% of male employees.  Performance awards are tiered and 47% of females received either a tier “1” or “2” award compared to 39.33% of males.

Annual performance awards for SCS are also paid in arrears, for the 21/22 performance year, awards to SCS were made in August 22 and in-year awards were also made in August 22.   Of the eligible SCS employees 93.75% of males received performance award compared to 100% of females.

6.2 Bonus: trend over the last 7 years

	16/17	17/18	18/19	19/20	20/21	21/22	22/23
% Paid a bonus (M/F)	46% / 51%	47% / 41%	55% / 58%	62% / 65%	75% / 74%	75.2% / 65.5%	75.8% / 74.04%

7. Pay by quartiles

7.1 Pay by quartile: trend over the last 7 years

7.2 Proportion of women by salary quartile

Pay by quartiles (M/F)	16/17	17/18	18/19	19/20	20/21	21/22	22/23
Lower quartile	53%	46%	48%	46%	46.0%	57.30%	55.00%
Lower middle quartile	28%	42%	40%	39%	48.5%	50.00%	52.00%
Upper middle quartile	36%	34%	35%	32%	28.0%	33.10%	35.00%
Upper quartile	27%	30%	33%	31%	31.3%	35.00%	39.00%

When the workforce is segmented into quartiles based on pay, and those quartiles are compared on gender grounds, the data shows that there has been an improvement of female representation across three of the quarters when compared to 21/22.

	Lower quartile	Lower middle quartile	Upper middle quartile	Upper quartile
Male	45%	48%	65%	61%
Female	55%	52%	36%	39%

7.3 Women by quartile since 20/21

Year	20/21	21/22	22/23
Upper quartile	31.30%	35.00%	38.00%
Upper middle quartile	28.00%	33.10%	33.80%
Lower middle quartile	48.50%	50.00%	52.70%
Lower quartile	46.00%	57.30%	54.60%

8. Work on closing the gender pay gap

UKEF remain resolute in our ambition to create a diverse and representative workplace – one that will attract and retain talented people from all backgrounds, and give everyone, including those already working for us, the opportunity to achieve their potential.

In 2017 we started our journey by signing the Women in Finance Charter, publicly affirming UKEF’s commitment to improve gender diversity.  We aligned the department’s goals with the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy which set out new programmes and initiatives to realise the Civil Service wider ambition to become the UK’s most inclusive employer.

We set ourselves a clear target to increase female representation at SCS grades and it is fantastic to see that female representation has increased from 28% in 21/22 to 33% in 22/23.

UKEF had set a target to reduce its 19/20 mean GPG (13.9%) by 2% by the end of 22/23.  It was therefore particularly disappointing that the mean GPG for 21/22 had widened to 14.2%, however, UKEF pro-actively worked with the Chief Executive Officer and the Gender-Network and implement a range of initiatives and we are delighted to report that we have achieved our target of 11.9%. 

Our Learning and Development team’ work with business stakeholder to identify talent management opportunities and help support female staff progression through a range of programmes and initiatives.  In the last 12 months we have supported 20 places for the Women in Leadership Annual Conference; and of the 24 places we offered on the Stepping into Leadership programme, 12 participants (50%) were women.   

Each year UKEF develops Diversity & Inclusion priorities, to work towards achieving the overall targets set out in the People Strategy, and to address other inequalities which are raised through other means (e.g. staff networks).  The People Strategy for 2024-27 is currently under development, and addressing the remaining Gender Pay Gap will remain a priority.

Whilst we recognise that we have made good progress in the last 12 months we shall continue to work with our network to identify ways in which we can continue to close our gender pay gap.  Accountability starts with the senior leaders within UKEF, therefore, in order to ensure diversity and inclusion remains at the heart of our business there is commitment as from the Executive Committee to ensure that D&I objectives are embedded within all of the SCS cohort’s objectives. To support this the Head of Employee Experience attended the January SLT meeting, to provide further guidance on ensuring that these objectives are tangible and relevant. 

Last year we committed to a number of actions in order to help improve our GPG and we are able to detail below progress made:

• The gender network felt that women at a grade 7 and grade 6 level experienced potential barriers to promotion.
  • In order to address this we conducted a survey and followed up with a cohort of female employees to better understand their concerns.  As a result of this survey, 13 recommendations were implemented, these included publishing our pay decision making process, as well as promoting mentoring and leadership training on D&I objectives.  Longer term actions include using data to reduce the gender pay gap, further developing family friendly policies, and reviewing UKEF employees’ diversity information and People Survey data to inform the next People Strategy.
  • We will promote the various talent schemes which are available across the grades to ensure that opportunities are available to females to support their career development.
• UKEF HR has maintained its strong relationship with the Gender Network, and this is actively promoted across UK.  The network continues to play a strong role in championing gender diversity issues at UKEF.  In 22/23 we:
  • supported the Gender network by providing funding for speakers and events, and promoting opportunities for women including the career progression survey and sharing access to the annual People Survey data that can be filtered by gender.
  • we increased our focus on Inclusion and Fair Treatment, this has also been championed at a senior level by our Chief Executive and Executive Committee members. UKEF has also provided sexual harassment awareness and general Unacceptable Behaviours training to members of the HR team and the department’s Appropriate Behaviour Champions.
  • the Gender Network has organised and delivered events in the past year including audiences with Executive Committee members, inviting external speakers, and marking International Women’s Day with awards and recognition for colleagues, writing blogs, supporting their members, and working collaboratively with other staff diversity networks and HR.
• Use insights from women who have been hired into senior posts within UKEF and understand what attracted them to the organisation so we can learn from this.
  • Our Chief Executive Officer has met with female SCS employees, and any lessons learned from their experience will be used to influence UKEF’s on-going selection processes.
• To review language in recruitment material to ensure that the documentation is not inadvertently discriminatory towards any protected characteristics.
  • A new style recruitment pack has been introduced which promotes broader diversity within UKEF.
• Attracting more women into UKEF remains a key target.
  • we continue to anonymise the application process to reduce unconscious bias and at the SCS level, we have mandated that the “long list” must contain female candidates.  At a non-SCS level we also use a broader range of careers websites to attract a larger number of female applicants.
  • we have ensured that there is broader diversity on interview panels (both gender and ethnicity) and that this is representative of UKEF as an organisation.
  • We are working with line manager to discuss how roles are advertised to ensure we can offer greater flexibility on both a part time/flexible working basis.

• We have developed and published guidance for staff on how to take advantage of reverse mentoring programme.

• We offer shared parental leave, as well as job share and part-time opportunities, and have guidance to help line managers ensure those returning from parental/adoption leave feel supported and welcomed.

In addition to the above, the Department continues to explore further initiatives to help reduce the gender pay gap, these include:

• Diversity and Inclusion is a key strand of our 2024-27 People Strategy, we have committed to improving the diversity of our workforce and ensuring that all staff are given the opportunity to flourish in a work environment where they feel supported, valued and included.
• To continue to review how developmental opportunities are considered across teams within UKEF.
• To continue to review and utilise data to better understand areas to focus on, including analysis of performance rating by grade and gender (as well as other protected characteristics).
• UKEF is committed to reviewing its current approach to remuneration, in-line with the parameters set by Cabinet Office and HM Treasury.

9. Staff included in the Gender Pay Gap data

1. Information is based upon individuals employed by UKEF on 31st March 2023.
2. Contractors (off payroll workers) are out of scope for this report.
3. Information prepared and published 26 March 2024.
4. The GPG data is taken from Civil Service ACSES data, and this did not include Fast Streamers who are funded by the Cabinet Office.
5. We confirm that data reported by UKEF is accurate and has been calculated according to the requirements and methodology set out in the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties and Public Authorities) Regulations 2017: Shane Lynch Director of Resources, UKEF.