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Our mission as a social enterprise

Our mission

We believe that WIBF can support the development of a financial services industry which offers women equal opportunities as employees, customers and entrepreneurs to reach their full potential, while enabling better businesses and places to work to be built and for the industry to become more sustainable. To achieve this, we connect our members to a wide network of influencers, business leaders and women at all stages of their careers, we challenge the industry to adopt new ideas and address structural barriers, and we inspire our wider community to push for change.

Our heritage

Run by volunteers, Women in Banking & Finance brings over 40 years of activity to support women and the UK financial services industry as a whole. We were founded in 1980 as a response to academic research into the employment of women in the banking sector by Margery Povall at the London School of Economics (LSE). Margery then teamed up with a group of senior women in banking to establish the WIBF network, which has continued to push for change through ground-breaking initiatives such as our annual awards (launched in 1998), our mentoring programme (2007) and our Accelerating Change Together thought leadership project.

As a social enterprise, a status we adopted in 2022, we continue to seek change and are aligned to the UN sustainable development goals of 5 (achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls), 8 (promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.) and 10 (reduce inequalities and ensure no one is left behind).

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Testimonials

We're proud to support WIBF by being a founding partner of the ACT research to help retain and promote women in the financial services workforce.

To be a high-performing organisation, we need a team that is representative of the places where we operate and the clients we serve. Citi has a strong record of action on important issues related to diversity, inclusion and equality and supporting the work of WIBF is essential to ensure female representation continues to grow and is appropriately recognised.

We know that one piece of data must change: the number of women in leadership in business, technology and finance. It’s why we have set our own ambitious targets for women in our top leadership and it’s why we have been a long-term supporter of WIBF and will work with you to inspire our sector to hire, promote and develop women.

WIBF helps us to connect with institutions committed to driving change and to advancing equality across the UK.

Find out more