Financial services in drive to recruit female coders as stark gender gap is revealed

The banking and financial services sector is the industry most keen to attract female coders into their workforce, data reveals today (12 December), as Starling Bank and Lloyds Banking Group become the latest major finance companies to actively search for female tech talent with Code First Girls - the largest provider of free coding courses for women in the UK.

They join 26 other banks and financial services companies, including Blackrock, Morgan Stanley, NatWest, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America, in partnering with Code First Girls the UK’s largest provider of free coding courses for women. The financial sector is the largest and fastest growing proportion of Code First Girls’ hundred-strong client list, with fintechs and traditional banks alike keen to hire more women.

Meanwhile new analysis of the latest ONS Labour Force Survey reveals that women make up only 18 per cent of computer programmers and software development professionals, web design professionals, and data analysts in the UK. There is also a significant gap in the finance industry with new analysis showing women make up just 30 per cent of UK brokers, financial analysts and advisers.

This news comes as Anna Brailsford, CEO of Code First Girls, joins the Advisory Panel for the Women in Finance Charter a commitment by HM Treasury and signatory firms to work together to build more gender balanced teams across the financial services sector. In this role, Brailsford will play a vital role guiding the UK’s biggest employers on best practice to recruit and progress women.

Female-founded business Code First Girls is seeing an increasing number of women looking beyond roles offered by big tech firms, with organisations across all sectors needing tech talent.

A recent survey by Code First Girls of more than 1,200 women showed that Goldman Sachs, NatWest, and Barclays feature in the top ten companies that female coders most want to work for. However, they still remain behind the dominant tech companies Google, Spotify, Apple, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon in popularity.

Anna Brailsford, CEO of Code First Girls, said: “There is a glaring gender gap in both the tech and financial services industries, which becomes even worse when you look at senior teams. These industries are critical for the UK’s economic competitiveness and innovation, but they need to diversify to better reflect the UK and benefit from female talent.

“Through partnerships with companies like Starling Bank and Lloyds Banking Group, we are helping women break into the industry by linking amazing talent with businesses globally.

“Our mission is to close the serious, long-term gender gap in the tech industry by giving women the opportunity to learn to code and get jobs in tech, at no cost to them. We’re growing at an incredibly fast pace, with businesses, government and universities across the country getting on board.”

Sharon Doherty, chief people and places officer at Lloyds Banking Group, said: “We need diversity of all kinds across our team, so that we can fully represent the many different customers and communities we serve.

“At Lloyds Banking Group we’re committed to our aspiration of 50 per cent of women in senior roles by 2025 and we’ve made great progress but there’s still more we can do. Our aspiration becomes more challenging in some of our more technical areas, where the industry is still not attracting female talent into the pipeline in the same way that we are able to attract male talent.”

By Mark Adair – Correspondent, Bdaily

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