Legal & General Investment Management has diverged from its parent company by widening its gender pay gap over the last 12 months.
LGIM’s median pay gap rose from 21.4% in 2017 to 22.8% in 2018, while the wider Legal & General group saw its gender pay gap fall from 31.6% to 29%. A press release attributed the gender pay and bonus gap to its employment of more men than women in senior and higher paid roles.
The fund group announced last month Columbia Threadneedle’s EMEA boss Michelle Scrimgeour would replace Mark Zinkula as chief executive of LGIM placing a woman at the helm of the asset management division.
LGIM gender pay gap widens between 2017 and 2018
| 2018 | 2017 | ||
| Pay | Mean | 21.8% | 21% |
| Median | 22.8% | 21.4% | |
| Bonus | Mean | 54.6% | 54.6% |
| Median | 58.3% | 55.2% |
Source: Legal & General
The pay gap figures run counter to the asset manager’s marketing campaign ‘Own Your World’, which promotes products that it says have positive social and environmental impacts. In June 2018, when the campaign was launched, LGIM said it had been voting against the chairmen at companies with all male boards and had also commited to divest from companies that have failed to address climate change risk in its Future World fund range.
In response to the gender pay gap, L&G group HR director Emma Hardaker-Jones said the group is hiring more women at all levels, including people returning from a career break. Hardaker-Jones pointed out Legal & General had been added to the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index.
