HSBC reveals gender pay gap widened to 61 pct

Bloomberg

Pay for female staff at HSBC Holdings Plc’s UK business fell further behind male colleagues’ in the last year, according to new figures from the London-based bank.
Women at HSBC earned 61 percent less on average compared with male employees at the lender, a wider gap than the 59 percent difference the firm reported a year ago, already the biggest in the banking industry.
By comparison, Lloyds Banking Group Plc most recently reported a 31.5 percent gender pay gap, while Nationwide Building Society reported a 28 percent difference in the average hourly wages paid to men and women. Across sectors, the average in the UK is closer to 17 percent, according to the Office for
National Statistics.
HSBC had said when it first published its gender pay gap figures for 2017 that the figure for 2018 was likely to be wider. The bank said the large gap
was explained by many fac-
tors, including an abundance of men in senior leadership roles, the over-representation of women in junior jobs and more women than men opting to work part-time.
In a statement filed with this year’s disclosures, the bank said it would “make
appropriate adjustments”
if it identified any instance of unequal pay that couldn’t be adequately justified by experience or performance.