Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
We value the diversity of businesses that we support and are committed to doing everything in our power to help them flourish and grow.
Aligned with our ESG strategy, we support major DEI initiatives in the Venture Capital industry and set market standards for our delivery partners.
To reflect our external ambition internally, we have a progressive DEI strategy focused on creating a workplace where everybody feels included and supported, where diversity is celebrated, and all colleagues can be their true selves at work.
The Race at Work Charter
To reflect our external ambition, BBB signed the Race at Work Charter in March 2021.
Building on the work of the 2017 McGregor-Smith Review, the Race at Work Charter is a public commitment to improving the experiences of Black, Asian, and ethnic-minority employees in the workplace.
It sets out five actions for signatories to take:
- Appointing an executive sponsor for race
- Capturing data and publicising progress
- Ensuring zero tolerance of harassment and bullying
- Making equality in the workplace the responsibility of all leaders and managers
- Taking action that supports ethnic-minority career progression
Investing in Women Code
The British Business Bank was a founding signatory of the Investing in Women Code and our commercial subsidiary British Patient Capital was one of the first institutional investors to sign up to the Code.
The Investing in Women Code is a commitment to enhance female entrepreneurship in the UK by improving their access to tools, resources, and finance.
Learn more about how as an organisation, the British Business Bank is committed to upholding this code:
Learn more about the Investing In Women Code.
Our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts in recruitment
We strive to be an equal opportunities employer and are committed to onboarding, developing, and retaining individuals who can help us meet our strategic goals.
In order to ensure a diverse workplace where talent is celebrated and colleagues have the resources to pursue their own development, we have rolled out a range of policies and programmes.
We are always looking for ways to strengthen these policies and programmes further wherever we can.
Learn more Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
Research
Core to the Bank’s mission is making finance markets work better for all smaller businesses in the UK.
Here are just some of the pieces of research we have done into diversity and representation within finance:
Invest in Women Taskforce
The Invest in Women Taskforce is an industry-led, government-backed initiative with the ultimate goal of making the UK the best place in the world to be a female entrepreneur.
Its mission is to create the largest funding pot world-wide for female investors, with capital deployed by female investors into female-powered businesses across the UK.
In support of the aims of the Taskforce, the British Business Bank has committed to supporting the aims of the investing £50m into female-led funds through its existing programmes.
Female-led funds should approach our teams at the Enterprise Capital Funds and British Patient Capital to explore funding, where the criteria for funding from those programmes will remain the same, but we will be actively seeking to support more female led funds with the additional capital available.
Find out more about the Invest in Women Taskforce.
HM Treasury's Women in Finance Charter
In September 2018, the British Business Bank signed the Women in Finance Charter, and committed to publishing a yearly update on the progress we’ve made in fulfilling our commitments under the charter.
When we signed up to the Charter in 2018, we had 33% female representation on our Executive Committee, 35% female representation in our Senior Leadership Team, and 43% women across the Bank’s total workforce of 263 colleagues.
As of 31 July 2021, we achieved 60% female representation on our Executive Committee, exceeding our target of 50%.
In 2022 we updated our target definition to clarify the Bank’s executive decision makers.
As of 31 July 2024, we have 50% women Executive Committee members, including attendees, against a target of 50% by 30/09/25 (within a 10% tolerance).
Since 2023 we have increased representation by 4%, this positive uptick followed a period of significant change in 2023, where the Bank dropped to 46% in 2023.
Since then, we have been joined by a number of female appointments to our C-Suite.
In FY23/24 we set out an ambitious DEI strategy which encompasses talent attraction and development, DEI metrics, people policies, communications and training, as well as broader stakeholder engagement.
To specifically address the gap which occurred last year we increased our use of diverse job boards and our engagement with the agencies and job boards, as well analysing the language used in our job descriptions and job ads to make them more inclusive.
We will continue to focus on reviewing our progress and setting actions/interventions to ensure that we maintain our target and provide an inclusive proposition to external and internal stakeholders.
We’re confident that through building our talent pipeline through succession planning and targeted development we can continue to maintain our position and further increase diverse representation in leadership ahead of our deadline of September 2025.
Accreditations
