Diversity and inclusion

Strengthening our business through the diversity of our people

Our commitment

At Handelsbanken, trust, respect, empowerment and responsibility underpin our commitment to a diverse and inclusive culture. To us, diversity and inclusion means that everyone must have the same rights, opportunities, and conditions to develop and contribute to the Bank and their own career.

A foundation of our success

Bringing together and valuing different perspectives is an important part of our success, and therefore closely linked to our profitability goals. We believe that having customers from a diverse range of backgrounds and expectations goes hand in hand with greater competitiveness. It drives innovation and strengthens our business. As an organisation that believes in having purpose that goes beyond profitability, we also simply feel it is the right thing to do.

We aim to recruit, develop and retain employees with diverse backgrounds and perspectives while also reflecting the diversity of the communities we operate in, enhancing our ability to even better understand the market and adapt to a constantly changing society. We take pride in nurturing long-term relationships with our customers, employees, suppliers and local communities.

We understand providing the right support for colleagues allows them to continue to develop their careers in a way which also helps them better balance their work and personal lives. In support of this, as of January 2023, we take a gender-neutral approach to our family-friendly offering. This means that all of our colleagues, regardless of gender or how they become a parent, will receive the same level of enhanced leave and pay. We’ve also introduced grandparents leave, because we know that many new parents rely on grandparents for childcare when they return to work.

Meet our people

A part of our values, culture and day-to-day work

Our work with equality, diversity and inclusion forms a fundamental part of our values and corporate culture. We make every effort to include it as a natural and integral part of our day-to-day work. We don’t limit our attention and take care to encompass the different skills, experience, socioeconomic backgrounds, and circumstances of individuals. This includes gender, transgender identity or expression, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, and religion, amongst others.

All business plans include specific goals and activities that promote equality, diversity and an inclusive culture. We have an employee-led Diversity & Inclusion Working Group (co-chaired by an Executive Committee member and the Head of Development & Inclusion) who feed into the Bank’s direction. We also have several Employee Resource Groups who, along with the D&I Working Group, support on activities and initiatives, engage in regular conversations about our progress and identify opportunities to celebrate individuality.

Furthering gender equality

Partnering with the Women in Finance charter

By 2026 Handelsbanken aims to have 40% female leaders. We have partnered with the Women in Finance Charter to support our goals and track our progress. The charter is a pledge for gender balance across the UK financial services industry, based on the recommendations of a review published in March 2016 by HM Treasury.

Gender equality progress and plans

Gender pay gap reporting

We are pleased to support and participate in the annual reporting of our overall gender pay gap information.

As equality is important to us, each year we analyse where any pay gaps are, put in place actions to reduce the gaps as part of our business plans, and maintain focus on this throughout the year at all levels of the business.