HM Treasury's Women in Finance Charter

The HM Treasury’s Women in Finance Charter (the Charter) is a commitment by signatory firms to work together to build a more balanced and fair financial services industry. Credit Services Association Limited (CSA) supports this initiative. We recognise that a balanced workforce is good for both our activities as a trade body and our subsidiary’s activities as a training provider. We therefore strive to achieve this balance and to encourage a diverse and inclusive culture.

When we signed up to the Charter in December 2019 we had 36% female representation in the senior management of CSA itself and 0% female representation in the senior management of our wholly owned subsidiary, CSA (Services) Ltd. We set a Charter target of achieving 50% for CSA and 30% for CSA (Services) Ltd by the end of 2022.

CSA achieved its target of 50% in March 2022 (ahead of the deadline) and CSA (Services) Ltd exceeded its original target of 30% in March 2021 (again ahead of target) when the female representation rose to 40%.

Current position and expectations for the coming year

When we set our original Charter target for CSA we recognised that our progress would depend on the democratic elections required to appoint new board directors from our membership and that our ability to influence gender balance in these circumstances would therefore be limited.

We are ending this 2024 calendar year with female representation in CSA at 42%. This is primarily due to the numbers of elected directors on the board over which we have very little control other than by encouraging all eligible candidates to stand for election regardless of gender. We are pleased to report that, where we do have more ability to influence numbers, the proportion of female senior managers as a percentage of our employed senior management executive team holds at our 50% target and two out of our three current independent directors are women very experienced in their respective fields. We are a very small organisation so any small changes to the number of women either appointed to our boards or employed by CSA has the potential significantly to affect our Charter target.

For CSA (Services) Ltd, female representation is now at 28% which falls slightly short of our target of 30% and has fallen from its peak at 40% in 2021/2022. This is due to changes to the makeup of its board during the year.

Our annual CSA board elections will take place in February 2025 and there will be six vacancies so we very much hope that the results of these elections will support us to meet our Charter targets. If the elections result in an increased number of women we will also be able to look again at the makeup of the CSA (Services) Ltd board.

By originally subscribing to the Charter we aimed to promote gender diversity in the financial services sector that we serve. We were therefore delighted that two of our larger members (both with women on the CSA board who encouraged their respective member firms to sign up to the Charter) became Charter signatories this year (as announced in the WIF list of signatories in February 2024). We continue to believe that it is very important for CSA to remain a signatory to the Charter and have reassessed our targets and are comfortable that they remain appropriate.

Chris Leslie is the member of the board of directors of CSA who is responsible and accountable for gender diversity and inclusion within CSA. He is the Chief Executive Officer of the CSA.

September 2024.