Royal Bank of Scotland : RBS announces Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic targets for the bank’s most senior roles

Industry best practice is to have 10-14% of leadership roles filled by black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) employees. RBS is setting the ambitious target to achieve 14% BAME leaders by 2025.

Of the UK employees who chose to disclose their ethnicity, BAME representation is currently 15% compared to the UK census working age population of 14%. However, only 4% of the bank's top three leadership layers and 8% of the top 4000 roles are currently occupied by employees from BAME backgrounds.

Members of the bank's Executive Committee are accountable for improvements in their own business areas. This replicates the successful approach to improving the bank's gender balance which, since launching at the end of 2014, has seen the bank improve the number of senior roles held by women across all business areas to 37%.

To achieve these targets, each business area will decide what they need to do to support talent identification, recruitment, development and promotions in their respective part of the bank. The bank will also continue reciprocal mentoring and external mentoring circles with its multicultural employee network and BAME colleagues.

Marjorie Strachan, RBS Head of Inclusion, said:

'To serve our customers well we need to truly represent the diversity of the communities we operate in, and this target is a key step forward in helping us to do that. Increasing the diversity of our leadership teams will bring new ideas to the table. This is another step towards becoming a truly inclusive bank.'

In 2017 RBS retained a Gold rating in the Business in the Community's Race Equality Campaign for the second year running. The bank is also now recognised as one of the Top 100 Companies for Race and was shortlisted for a Business in the Community Workplace Race Equality Awards for Leadership.

Notes:
•During 2013, RBS set an aspiration to have 30% senior women in our top c.5,000 roles by 2020. The bank has exceeded this aspiration - the proportion of women in this population has risen to 44% today.
• At the end of 2014 RBS decided to be more ambitious, setting a formal target to have at least 30% women in the top three leadership layers in each of our businesses by 2020 (c.7/800 roles). This is currently 37% on aggregate.
• Gender pipeline (top c. 4000 roles / CEO-4) now standing at 44%.
• Further, RBS has been public about its aspiration to have a fully gender balanced workforce (50/50) by 2030.