gender pay gap

LV= recognises and embraces the benefits of having a diverse Board. We see it as an essential element in maintaining a competitive advantage. A truly diverse Board will include and make good use of differences in skills, regional and industry experience, education and professional background, race, ethnicity and gender. Other personal attributes of the directors which are likely to support high performance, such as courage, openness, honesty, tact, ability to listen, strength of character and judgement are also considered beneficial in developing a truly diverse Board. These differences will be considered in determining the optimum composition of the Board and, when possible, should be balanced appropriately.

All Board appointments will be made on merit and reflect the skills and experience required for the Board (as a whole) to be effective. The Remuneration and Nomination Committee (Rem & NomCo) reviews and assesses the Board’s composition to ensure that, between them, the directors have sufficient current and relevant knowledge and experience to understand the key activities and risks in the business. In reviewing Board composition, the Rem & NomCo will consider the benefits of all aspects of diversity to reduce groupthink, whilst maintaining an appropriate range and balance of skills, experience and background on the Board. 

The Board supports ethnic and gender diversity and is aware of the target for women to represent 40% of Board membership and to have one senior Board position held by a female. The Board also supports the Parker Review recommendation to have at least one director from an ethnic minority background by 2024. However, in identifying suitable candidates for appointment to the Board, the Rem & NomCo will consider candidates on merit against objective criteria as well as having due regard for the benefits of diversity on the Board.

The Board is committed to ensuring continued focus on the diversity of their membership, and our colleagues, with the aim of better reflecting the demographics of our members and customers. We are a signatory of the Women in Finance Charter and remain committed to increasing the proportion of women in senior roles. The Rem & NomCo will continue to challenge management to improve policies and processes to ensure diversity remains a key focus and targets are progressed and achieved.

The gender balance in 2025 for the Non-Executive Directors on the Board has remained at a 50:50 ratio, with three male and three female members. As the Board is comprised of two Executive Directors and six Non-Executive Directors, this achieves 38% female representation overall. The role of Senior Independent Director is held by a female Non-Executive Director and our Board also includes one Non-Executive Director from an ethnic minority background. Each Non-Executive Director has a different area of expertise and professional background which balances the skills and experience of the Board. 

Diversity, equality, inclusion and wellbeing are central to who we are and how we work (inclusion is one of our core values). We recognise that the unique perspectives, backgrounds and experiences of all our colleagues is what makes LV= stronger. We believe that everyone should feel empowered to bring their whole selves to work and live happier, healthier lives.

Our approach is led from the top, with senior leaders and people managers championing inclusive behaviours and wellbeing. We actively engage colleagues at all levels, encouraging participation in colleague-led DEI and wellbeing networks (each sponsored by a member of our Executive team) and fostering allyship across the business.

We’re committed to:

• Developing diverse talent pipelines with a focus on increasing female representation in senior roles.

• Ensuring policies and communications are inclusive, clear and purposeful. In 2025, we launched our inclusive language glossary – a resource designed to help all colleagues communicate thoughtfully and inclusively.

• Building leadership and line manager capability to truly understand and connect with colleagues – fostering inclusive teams and a genuine sense of belonging.

• Providing tools, programmes and resources that raise greater awareness and understanding around DEI and wellbeing.

• Listening to our colleagues through engagement surveys and regular feedback and learning from external best practice. We are proud that our Employee Net Promoter Score for DEI has increased to +71.

• Collecting and analysing socioeconomic data to better understand the intersectional barriers that may impact career progression, pay equity and wellbeing. We have made great progress in collecting our socioeconomic data throughout 2025 and we will continue to build on our data strength in 2026.

• We’re proud to partner with The King’s Trust and have launched an internal King’s Trust Volunteering Hub. This platform enables colleagues to support young people by assisting with CV writing, delivering workshops, offering long-term mentoring and more – helping to inspire and empower future generations. This forms part of our social impact approach, LV= Together, and our commitment to supporting society and our communities, making positive and lasting impact.

Together, we’re building a culture where everyone feels valued, supported and empowered to succeed. While we recognise that progress takes time, we remain focused on creating an environment where women can thrive and advance into senior roles. This is key to driving long-term and sustainable change.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has identified flexible working as a key recommendation for improving gender equality and addressing the gender pay gap.

We recognise the growing demand for roles that offer flexibility around where, when and how people work. Many of our colleagues already benefit from both fixed and non-fixed flexible arrangements and an increasing number of our roles are now advertised as hybrid working. 

In 2024, we introduced a hybrid working framework designed to maximise colleague effectiveness, enhance business performance and support our diversity, wellbeing and sustainability goals. While time together remains key for building relationships and collaboration, we also provide high levels of individual flexibility – empowering inclusivity and agility and enabling colleagues to maintain a healthy work-life balance. Feedback from our regular all-colleague surveys confirms that this approach is both highly valued and effective.

As part of our commitment to ensure equal opportunities and support for all colleagues to advance their careers, we’ve developed a number of key initiatives. 

Recruitment

In 2024, we launched our new recruitment system designed to strengthen fairness and inclusivity in our hiring processes. This includes anonymised CVs to help reduce unconscious bias and a digital tool that checks job adverts for inclusive language. Each application also features an equal opportunities statement, reassuring candidates that we value diversity and are open to flexible working conversations.

In 2025, we’ve built on this progress by:

• Partnering with Diversity Jobs Group, which is already generating applications from a broader talent pool.
• Introducing an Inclusive Recruitment module for all people managers to complete, ensuring best practice is embedded across the business.
• Achieving Disability Confident Leader status (Level 3) – a significant milestone that reflects our commitment to inclusion, equity and accessibility. This recognition not only highlights our own inclusive practices but also our role in supporting other organisations to improve their disability confidence.

Menopause

We continue to build on our menopause activity that took place in 2023 and 2024. This included sharing practical guides with colleagues and delivering people manager sessions to help them provide the best support to impacted team members and colleagues. Recognising its importance, we will continue to deliver menopause awareness sessions to new managers throughout 2025 and beyond.

We also have a dedicated menopause section on our intranet, featuring our trained network of Menopause Champions available across all our offices to support our colleagues. The section includes key tools, internal guidance and external resources to ensure colleagues have access to the information they need.

Family friendly policies

In 2025, we enhanced our maternity, adoption and paternity policies to allow colleagues more paid time off to spend with their families at this important time. Alongside this, we proudly introduced Parenting Pals – a dedicated support network and internal community that provides a safe, welcoming space for parents to share experiences, seek advice and access support.
We continue to support colleagues with both paid and unpaid leave and regularly review our family-friendly policies (such as fertility support and carer leave) to ensure they remain relevant and offer the right level of support.

Mentoring

We continue to operate MyMentor, a programme designed to provide support and guidance to our colleagues to help them grow and develop in their career. Mentees are purposefully matched with mentors based on their interests and development objectives. 

In 2025, we introduced a reciprocal mentoring programme – an initiative that pairs senior leaders with colleagues across the business to enable mutual learning and build a deeper understanding of lived experiences at all levels of our organisation.

We’re proud to celebrate a year of outstanding recognition for our commitment to diversity, culture and employee experience. From industry awards to leadership accolades, these achievements reflect the strength of our people and values.

Highlights:

• Personnel Awards: Employee Experience Award – Winner

• Engage Awards: Best Organisational Culture – Winner

• CIPD People Management Awards: Best Employee Experience Initiative – Finalist

• Collaboration Network Awards: Collaboration and Inclusion Award – Finalist

• Most Inclusive Company in the Metro Pride Awards 2025 – Independently shortlisted

• Financial Times’ UK’s Best Employers 2025 – Featured

• Our Chief Executive, David Hynam was awarded FT Adviser Diversity Champion of 2025, was second (globally) in the Involve Hero Advocates list for supporting women’s equality and placed highly on Enable’s Top Role Model list for 2025

• Recognised for the second time as one of Europe’s Diversity Leaders in the Financial Times and Statista’s 2025 list

• Cover Women in Protection Awards – Eight shortlisted entries

We signed up to the Women in Finance Charter in 2016 as a commitment to supporting gender diversity. This will continue and our Executive team and Board are committed to increasing the proportion of women in senior positions. 

We set an ambitious target of 43%, or above, for female representation in senior roles by the end of 2025.  We were delighted to have achieved our target by the end of 2024 and we continued to meet this standard by the end of 2025.

We remain committed to making changes to ensure we can move in a positive direction and are currently in the process of reviewing our targets for female representation in senior roles for 2026 and beyond.

WIFC commitments:

• We will continue to target female representation at senior levels.
  
• We will annually publish our progress against set targets.
  
• A member of the Executive team will be responsible and accountable for gender diversity, equity and inclusion.
  
• Our targets are embedded in the Executive teams’ performance plans and will be directly linked to performance-related pay.