Between 5 April 2022 and 5 April 2023, our median gender pay gap shrunk from 9.3% to 8.1%
Any shift that narrows the gap is a positive change but we know we still have lots of work to do. In this report we'll explain our gender pay gap in detail and what we're doing to close it.
Why our gap's reduced
In our last report our gender pay gap had widened from 4.3% to 9.3%. This was because we grew our tech team and hired more men than women into these roles (reflecting the available candidate gender mix in the industry). Because salaries for tech roles are comparably higher across the industry, our pay gap increased at a company level.
Since then we've increased the proportion of women in our tech teams by 2.2%, which led to a 1.2% decrease in our company gender pay gap. Later in the report we'll explain what we're doing to address diversity in the tech area of our business.
Our median bonus gap stayed at 0%, while our mean bonus gap shrunk from 56% to 47%. The median bonus gap is the difference in midpoint bonus payments between men and women, while the mean gap is the difference in the average bonus payment.
We don't pay performance bonuses at Monzo, but for gender pay gap reporting purposes we see the following things as bonuses: the taxable value of share options when our colleagues choose to exercise their share options and recruitment bonuses for things like referrals and relocation.
Changes in recruitment activity and the proportion of men and women choosing to exercise their options means our bonus gap can fluctuate year on year.
An overview of our gender pay gap for 2022-2023
Over the last year we’ve invested in making our roles attractive to senior women, and it’s paying off. We’ve hired 48 senior women (39% of all senior hires) meaning our overall senior women representation has increased from 35% to 37%.
We’ve increased the proportion of women earning in the upper middle quartile (where a lot of our leaders sit) from 49% to 53% and decreased the proportion of women in our lower pay quartiles. We did also see a decrease in the proportion of women in our highest paid roles from 38% to 35%.
We’ve chosen to focus on the median (the midpoint) gender pay gap in our commentary because we think it gives a more representative view of any pay gap.
| Gap (relative to men) | Gap (relative to men) | Gap (relative to men) | Gap (relative to men) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | |
| Mean | 15.7% | 15.6% | 18.0% | 18.3% |
| Median | 14.3% | 4.3% | 9.3% | 8.1% |
| Mean bonus | 6.2% | 33.4%* | 56.0%* | 46.5% |
| Median bonus | 0.0% | 40.0%* | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Proportion receiving a bonus payment | -4.6% | 13.2% | 44.9% | 46.8% |
| Women/Men | Women/Men | Women/Men | Women/Men | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | |
| Upper hourly pay quarter (highest paid) | 32.8% / 67.2% | 34.9% / 65.1% | 38.2% / 61.8% | 35.3% / 64.7% |
| Upper middle hourly pay quarter | 45.6% / 54.4% | 50.1% / 49.9% | 48.6% / 51.4% | 52.5% / 47.5% |
| Lower middle hourly pay quarter | 43.2% / 56.8% | 47.9% / 52.1% | 51.4% / 48.6% | 48.3% / 51.7% |
| Lower hourly pay quarter (lowest paid) | 51.8% / 48.2% | 47.5% / 52.5% | 52.1% / 47.9% | 50.8% / 49.2% |
What we’ll keep doing to close our gender pay gap
Improving our performance management - education on reducing bias is baked into our performance management processes, but this year we strengthened it. We added diversity and inclusion principles to our employee performance review sessions to highlight how we make adjustments for people with medical conditions or who have returned from a long period of leave. For example, for caregiver leave.
Creating opportunities for growth - since our last report we’ve carried out some initial talent reviews where we ask leaders to assess employees on their future potential. We also have commenced ‘succession planning’ at leadership levels, which focuses on identifying and growing talent to fill leadership positions in the future. These types of activities support the pipeline of women into senior positions and the representation of women in higher paid roles.
Maintaining diversity at the very top - Our Board Diversity Policy makes sure we're looking for, hiring and retaining board members in a way that promotes diversity.
As signatories of the Women in Finance Charter we've recently submitted that, as of September 2023, we have 44% female representation in our executive committee and board. Our board is made up of 56% women and our executive committee is 33%.
Adding to our people policies and benefits - we asked our staff what is important to them in terms of benefits by sending out a survey. After 1,200+ responses we’re introducing a series of new benefits, like more sick days and access to 1:1 virtual coaching, counselling, and therapy with specialists in fields like pregnancy, menopause and domestic abuse.
Reporting diversity progress to leaders – we already have a goal to increase our representation of women in leadership roles to 40% and report on our progress to our Executive Committee every month. Now we also have quarterly updates with each business area leadership team to discuss their gender data and local action points.
What we're doing to address diversity in tech:
It’s a priority for us to improve gender diversity in the tech area of our business, and there are 7 key things we’re working on.
Recruitment - active sourcing means our hiring team is reaching out to women rather than relying only on direct applications. This means we now have a bigger pool of candidates to consider.
Onboarding - we have a dedicated onboarding programme for our engineers and are rolling out diversity and inclusion onboarding for leaders so they understand their role in contributing to gender equality.
Talent marketing - we have a 12 month programme of recruitment events dedicated to women in tech. We also run a 12-week Engineering Mentoring programme where Monzo engineers mentor engineers from the Coding Black Females network. This programme is now in its second year.
Progression - we're arranging dedicated conversations between women in tech and our most senior tech leadership to discuss career progression.
Community - we’re working with our employee diversity and inclusion networks to form committees with specific teams to work on issues that are important to them, like career development or social community. We’re looking forward to launching our parents in tech group this year.
Inclusive leadership - we’re building on our inclusion awareness sessions by creating a dedicated session on inclusive behaviour and language for our leaders.
Raising profiles - we’ve renewed our partnership with the Women in Tech Forum and our women participate in their panels and leadership series.
Social mobility - we’re in the second year of our Customer Operations Engineering Sponsorship programme where colleagues in customer support roles go on an immersive software engineering course, with the opportunity to become full-time junior engineers once they’ve completed it.
We'll keep holding ourselves accountable and report on our gender pay gap annually, but will continue to look at our longer term strategy for lasting change within Monzo and our industry.
Find out more about how we’re improving gender representation in our latest Diversity and Inclusion report. If you have any feedback, we’d love to hear it.
The gender pay gap is the difference in earnings between men and women, throughout a company and across all roles and career levels. Although it can still happen, the Equality Act makes it illegal to pay people doing the same job different amounts. The gender pay gap, on the other hand, highlights the kinds of roles men and women hold within an organisation, and the different salaries associated with those roles. It exposes when women across a company are being paid less than men on average, and forces companies to confront why that's still the case. Often, that's because women are underrepresented at senior levels and in higher-paid parts of the company.
The numbers in the table above show a snapshot of our employees’ pay on 5th April 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023. You can see the average hourly rates we paid men and women on that date, and the percentage difference between them.
We've also put everyone in the company into four groups (or quartiles) according to how much we pay them, and you can see the percentage of men and women in each pay quartile.
Companies that employ more than 250 people are legally required to publish a snapshot of their gender pay gap on the 5th of April each year.