Women in finance charter

By signing up to the Women in Finance Charter (WiFC) in March 2023, we made a public commitment to our stakeholders, colleagues, clients, shareholders, suppliers and the finance sector that we aim to be leaders in this space. Our goal is to nurture and retain female talent within the organisation, and to continue to develop a workplace where female talent can thrive.

We currently use the FTSE Women Leaders framework to identify our leadership structure and, by signing the WiFC, we align with the commitment and aim to increase female representation in senior management roles* from 17% (as of August 2023) to 25% by the end of calendar year 2024.

• Employee resource groups: We invested in our employee resource groups (ERGs) - colleague-led network groups that provide peer-to-peer support and resources direct to the business. Our female-focused ERG, Women@CMC, was launched in the UK and Europe in 2022 after its successful implementation in our Asia Pacific (APAC) region in July 2020.
• Engagement surveys: We conducted regular global engagement surveys to measure the progress and impact of gender issues, reviewing our top scoring matrix and top opportunities, and devising action plans for relevant stakeholders. We shared regular updates internally, explaining the results, discussing current themes and trends, and sharing the progress we've made and actions we will take to move forward.
• Governance and accountability: We set gender-related performance targets at the very top of the organisation. All executive directors were assigned gender focused KPIs to increase the number of women in senior roles and across the company and will be remunerated accordingly.
• Gender pay gap report: We published our gender pay gap numbers on the government website. As of 5 April 2022, women working for CMC in the UK earned 71p for every £1 that our male employees earned, based on a comparison of median hourly pay. We look to publish a more detailed, qualitative report explaining our gender pay ambitions in FY24.
• Sustainability strategy: The Group's sustainability strategy, Our Tomorrow, has five key pillars of focus. One of these pillars, titled People Positive, is focused on addressing and improving the needs of our workforce. Within this area, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) was identified as a material risk following a materiality assessment. While all aspects of DE&I are important to the Group, we used the findings of our assessment to prioritise our focus in FY24 on three key areas: gender, ethnicity and disability.
• Understanding our colleagues: We introduced colleague listening groups to support and shape the progress of the DE&I strategy as part of the people plan. This strategy is being rolled out in our UK, EU and APAC regions.
• Female-focused professional development: After the Women@CMC ERG successfully implemented a female-focused mentor programme in our APAC region, the company championed its first female-focused mentoring programme across the UK and EU. The programme aims to connect our future female leaders with male and female senior leaders to provide a path to learn, gain skills and grow. The initial UK and EU mentor programme was piloted for four months with a cohort of 14 mentees, giving us an opportunity to learn and develop the programme before running a second iteration.

CMC Markets' key gender-focused development plans:

• Growth of female-focused professional development: Following the success of, and demand for, a female-focused mentor programme, we collated feedback and recommendations from participants to inform the development of a second programme. Starting in April 2023, this second programme had a larger cohort of 25 mentees, equating to 26% of our female workforce in the UK, and ran for five months until the end of August 2023.
• Coaching: We introduced mentor training for the second programme to support mentors and develop their skills, helping to ensure a positive experience for them and their mentees. Training ran in parallel with the mentoring programme so that mentors could put their learnings into practice and get support as the mentor-mentee relationship progressed.
• Corporate development: Following the success of Women@CMC's mentoring programme for female talent, the company recognised the value it brought to employees. We have plans to roll out a Group-wide mentoring programme which will be open to female and male colleagues looking for professional development growth.
• Inclusive recruitment: Over the last 12 months we have committed to building out the internal talent teams globally, with a clear focus on improving our gender balance. We've made our job descriptions/adverts more inclusive by using neutral language, aiming to present gender-balanced shortlists, and we are working with managers to ensure we have a diverse interview panel where possible. Moving forward, our aim is to run recruitment training sessions across the business, with a focus on diversity and inclusion, as well as using tools such as equality boosts with our CV database platform providers. Our agency partners will be measured on their performance relating to diversity.
• Inclusion in the workplace: We plan to implement a more inclusive approach to work practices, removing barriers and advocating equity. Our plan involves:
  • Reviewing new and existing policies/processes for inclusive language and equality
  • Delivering training to all employees to increase understanding of DE&I-related topics
  • Developing our reporting capability for DE&I-related metrics
  • Reporting against the guidelines set by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) in Australia and aligning with the requirements
  • Integrating selected actions recommended by the WGEA and the UK government's gender pay gap report into our business operations
  • Aligning the WGEA's guidelines and the UK government's gender pay gap report with the WiFC
• Data tracking: We are improving the tracking of gender diversity for each level within the organisation and setting ambitions to improve year-on-year.
• Succession planning: We continue to develop our succession planning process, incorporating a diversity focus and a longer-term planning horizon to capture more of our female talent.
• Themed learning: The Women@CMC ERG has driven our aspiration to develop learning programmes that support female talent. We are providing ongoing training that supports the development of self-confidence, assertive behaviours, and positive attitudes throughout the work-life cycle.
• Training: This year we aim to deliver inclusion training across the business to support our diverse workforce. This training will cover themes such as unconscious bias, inclusive leadership, psychological safety and allyship.

Representation in senior management roles (as defined by the FTSE Women Leaders framework)

- The proportion of women in senior management roles improved from 11% (October 2022) to 17% (August 2023) using the FTSE Women Leaders framework.

Global representation

- CMC's global gender balance has remained stable at 29% female and 71% male. Female representation in our UK workforce increased by 3%.

Graduate and internship representation

- In summer 2023 CMC Markets introduced a graduate and internship programme, which we hope will shape our future leadership. The gender breakdown as follows:

*Direct reports to executive directors