Women in Finance Charter 2025
Progeny is committed to advancing equity and supporting the progression of women to senior roles. Becoming a signatory to the HM Treasury Women in Finance Charter in 2019 enabled us to widen this commitment beyond Progeny to supporting progress in the wider Financial Services sector.
Women in Finance
We know that our industry still has a long way to go to improve gender representation and pay equality but as a signatory, we are committing to driving positive change. Now in our 6th year as a signatory, we are pleased to share our annual progress report for 2025.
Our charter commitments
- Our Chief Executive Officer, Tom Wood is responsible and accountable for equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) at The Progeny Group. Tom is supported by an Executive Committee committed to advancing EDI.
- Our target is to achieve 40% women in senior leadership by 31 December 2027. As of 1 September 2025, women make up 31% of our senior leadership.
- Our commitments and targets are published here on our website, and we will continue to update our progress annually.
Our progress
Each year, we set actions to support our EDI progress. Our actions are focused on hiring, promoting and keeping more women in our company.
The priorities we identified, and actions taken this past year include:
Embedding fair and inclusive hiring practices – we continue to evolve our hiring practices to ensure they are fair and inclusive. In the last 12 months, we have introduced new training and guidance for hiring managers and embedded various testing tools to help us understand more about a candidate’s work style preferences.
Commitment to closing the gender pay gap – unfortunately, the results in our second year of publishing the gender pay gap report (2025) show that there is much work to do. We know that gender pay gaps are a societal issue and not just a Progeny issue. We continue to be aware of the challenges ahead and remain committed to working with others in our industry and the HM Treasury Women in Finance Charter to drive positive change.
Building an inclusive culture – we continue to develop our policies and initiatives to advance EDI and ensure they support colleagues through different life stages. Key highlights include enhancements to our family friendly benefits, notably the extension of paid maternity and paternity leave, and the introduction of grandparental leave. A move towards more generous maternity leave is also part of efforts to close the gender pay gap.
Nurturing our talent – our colleagues’ development is important to us, and we are focused on ensuring everyone has equal access to opportunities. In the last 12 months, we have implemented a new performance management framework to ensure regular conversations are taking place where performance is reviewed, goals are set, and career aspirations explored.
We continue to invest in our in-house academy and summer camps to develop the next generation of Financial Planners. At the same time, we are reviewing how we expand our academy to support other career paths.
We have been working with colleagues to establish an Advancing Equity Forum which is due to launch later this year. This forum has been designed to empower our female colleagues in achieving their professional and personal goals, and to promote gender equality by raising awareness of the unique challenges women face in business. Its focus is on driving equity, creating allyship, and developing others.
Raising awareness and embedding EDI – we have recently launched our new purpose and values to help shape our company culture. Our shared values are designed to support a consistently positive experience for our colleagues and keep each other accountable for the way we behave.
We remain committed to embedding EDI in everything we do, and this includes our M&A activity. Each time we welcome a team member via acquisition, we are mindful of the cultural differences that exist as we bring our teams together. It is important to us that differences are embraced and included, and we continue to embed EDI in our integration processes.
Summary
Progeny is committed to the Women in Finance charter and will continue to place significant emphasis on strategies that advance equity, diversity and inclusion. We strongly believe that by doing right by our colleagues will not just benefit Progeny but our industry and society.
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Contact Progeny today to find out how we can support you, your family or your business.