FCA pay gap data 2025

We have set out below those employees that are included or excluded in our reporting data, ie, the ‘relevant population’. This methodology is based on how a colleague identifies their gender in accordance with the Government Equalities Office pay gap reporting statutory guidance[2]. 

Included:

• Employees on our payroll on 31 March 2025.
• Employees who identify as female or male through disclosure; if employees have not disclosed their gender, then we use sex identified through payroll.

Excluded:

• Employees who have identified as non-binary, use another term, or prefer not to say.
• Employees who have not been paid a full month’s pay; this could be due to an unpaid absence, or those leaving / joining part way through the month as we are unable to calculate their regular pay.

Our relevant population for 2025 is 5,058 employees.

This includes colleagues working in both the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Payment Systems Regulatory (PSR).  

The disclosure rates for gender, ethnicity and disability of these employees are outlined in Figures 2 and 3. For comparison, we have included the disclosure rates for 2024.

Disclosure rates should be considered when reviewing movements in pay gap reporting. Smaller populations are more likely to have bigger percentage changes where the underlying data may see minimal shifts.  

We continue to encourage our colleagues to disclose their characteristics and have made changes this year to our HR system, Workday, to make it easier for colleagues to add their personal information, particularly around their disability status and socio-economic background.

Depending on the workforce analysis presented, not all the data tables in this report will total to the relevant population figures in Figure 3. This includes where:

• Employees have been broken down by contractual grade.
• The table does not include the ‘prefer not to say’ disclosure category.

The pay gap calculations are based on employees’ ‘ordinary pay’.

This includes elements such as:

• basic pay, after any reduction for salary sacrifice schemes, such as pension contributions
• allowances

It does not include elements such as:

• overtime pay
• exit payments
• business expenses

There is currently no legal requirement to report on ethnicity or disability pay gaps, yet we choose to do so.

The population identified in the gender pay gap reporting is the same population used for the ethnicity and disability reporting, ie only those employees who meet the gender pay gap reporting criteria are included. This means the disclosure rates in this report may differ from other published data. Employees who have selected ‘prefer not to say’ for ethnicity and disability status are included in our disclosure rates.

On 18 March 2025, the UK government launched a consultation[3] to collect views on the introduction of mandatory ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting in the upcoming Equality (Race and Disability) Bill.

The consultation paper suggests that many aspects of the new reporting requirements will align with those already in place for gender pay gap reporting. We will closely monitor these developments as this could change the basis of how we calculate our ethnicity and disability pay gaps in future.

Key changes for 2025 since last year:

• Reductions in our gender pay gaps.
  • Our median gender pay gap has fallen from 11.5 to 9%.  
  • Our mean gender pay gap has fallen from 12.2 to 11.2%.  
• Reductions in our ethnicity pay gaps.
  • Our median ethnicity pay gap has fallen from 13 to 9.1%.
  • Our mean ethnicity pay gap has fallen from 17.1 to 14.9%.  
• Increases in our disability pay gaps.
  • Our median disability pay gap increased from 3.3 to 4.9%.
  • Our mean disability pay gap increased from 6.7 to 8.7%.

The distribution by salary quartiles looks at the hourly rate of pay when ordered from lowest to highest and grouped into equal quarters.

The lower quartile represents the lowest salaries, while the upper quartile represents the highest.

Gender

More women are placed in the lower quartile and more men in the upper quartile. Women occupy 64% of the lowest paid roles (lower quartile) compared to 36% of men. More men (18 percentage points more) are placed in the upper quartile compared to women (59% men compared to 41% women). There is a more balanced gender distribution in the middle quartiles.  

Since 2024, there has not been much movement in the distribution of women across the salary quartiles.

This disproportionate distribution of men and women particularly in the lower quartile and the upper quartile will continue to contribute to our overall gender pay gap.

Ethnicity

There has been a small increase in the distribution of minority ethnic colleagues in the higher salary quartiles. In the upper middle quartile, 35% are minority ethnic colleagues, up from 34% in 2024. The proportion of white colleagues in the lower quartile has increased by 4 percentage points, yet white colleagues continue to make up over three quarters (76%) of those in the upper salary quartile.  

The difference in the distribution of minority ethnic and white colleagues across the quartiles will contribute to our ethnicity pay gap.

Disability

The number of colleagues who disclosed their disability status was 3,591. Of this, 3,169 (88.2%) declared they do not have a disability compared to 298 (8.3%) who disclosed a disability. The remaining 124 colleagues selected prefer not to say. These figures compare with 275 (7.8%) of colleagues in 2024 declaring a disability. 

Even though the number of colleagues who have disclosed a disability is small, there tends to be a more even distribution through each of the salary quartiles in 2025.

There has been an increase of 2 percentage points of disabled colleagues in the lower quartile and an increase of 1 percentage point in the lower middle quartile since 2024. There has been a decrease of 1 percentage point of disabled colleagues in the upper middle quartile. A positive change is the increase of 1 percentage point of disabled colleagues in the upper quartile.

The figures below provide a breakdown by contractual grade for gender, ethnicity and disability. The figures show the overall pay gaps by contractual grade for each characteristic.  

Given the size of the associate contractual grade, this has been separated out into 2 groups: 

• Level 9 and level 8 associates.
• Senior and lead associates. 

The disclosure rates in Figure 8 differ from the overall disclosure rates set out in Figure 3 as employees are not included who either: 

• Are not categorised to a contractual grade.
• Have selected ‘prefer not to say’ for a disclosure category. 

Gender

Figure 9 shows the mean gender pay gap broken down by contractual grade for 2025 and 2024.

Within grades the gender pay gap is relatively small.

Within grades the mean gender pay gap is relatively small, apart from at the professional support grade.

The professional support pay gap of -24.8% reflects the fact that there are almost 8 times as many women as men in this contractual grade. Of the 318 professional support employees, 282 (89%) are female. This over-representation is a significant driver of the overall gender pay gap.  

We reproduced the overall 2025 gender pay gap figures but excluded any employees in the professional support contractual grade. This reduced the median pay gap from 9 to 6.8% and mean pay gap from 11.2 to 7.3%.

Ethnicity

Figure 11 shows the mean ethnicity pay gap broken down by contractual grade for 2025 and 2024.

Across all grades, apart from the 2 most senior grades (head of department and director), the mean ethnicity pay gap has reduced since 2024.

The professional support group have an ethnicity pay gap of 7.8%, down 0.3 percentage points from 2024. The level 9 and 8 associate grade, which has an almost equal split of minority ethnic and white employees, saw a reduction of 3.8 percentage points from 3.3% down to -0.5%. There was less change to the pay gap at the senior and lead associate – grade. The manager and technical specialist grade ethnicity pay gaps reduced by 3 and 3.7 percentage points, respectively.

The more senior contractual grades are much more prone to movement due to the smaller number of employees in the groups. The head of department ethnicity pay gap changed from -5.7 to 7.9% and the director ethnicity gap from -6.8 to 7.4%.  

Disability

Figure 13 shows the mean disability pay gap broken down by contractual grade for 2025 and 2024.

The overall disability pay gap at each contractual grade is not significant. It has increased by 2.8 percentage points at the senior and lead associate grade and 1.1 percentage points at the manager grade. The proportion of employees declaring a disability is, however, small and as such the figures vary considerably year on year.  

We have also considered the intersectionality of ethnicity and gender.

Since 2020 we have calculated the pay gap for minority ethnic women, based on a comparison between minority ethnic women and white men.

There continue to be improvements each year in the combined gender and ethnicity median and mean pay gaps. 

However, minority ethnic women still experience the largest pay gaps. These gaps are largely driven by the higher concentration of minority ethnic women in more junior roles and the higher concentration of white men in more senior roles. For example, at the professional support grade, 32.9% are minority ethnic women compared to 5.3% of white men. At the head of department group, 6.5% are minority ethnic women compared to 43.9% white men.

Figure 17 shows the ethnicity pay gap broken down by contractual grade against the 5 Office for National Statistics (ONS) ethnicity categories. 

The largest mean ethnicity pay gaps are found at the professional support, manager and technical specialist grade levels among our Asian, black and mixed/multiple ethnicity colleagues. However, at the level 9 and 8 associate grade, the pay gap is in favour of Asian and mixed/multiple ethnicity colleagues.

Figure 19 below shows the ethnicity pay gap broken down by the associate grade against the ONS ethnicity categories.

The associate grade includes a wide range of roles, so this breakdown provides a better reflection of the pay gaps within this very broad grade. 

There is no significant ethnicity pay gap at any of these associate grade levels. In most cases, the pay gap is in favour of Asian, black, mixed/multiple ethnicity and other ethnicity characteristics. 

Figure 21 shows the pay gap broken down for minority ethnic women in the associate grade against the ONS ethnicity categories.

We have a high representation of women and minority ethnic colleagues in our professional support and associate roles. 

With the additional breakdown of the associate grades, we can see the highest pay gaps are among other ethnic women in the senior associate grade at 3.6% and Asian women in the senior and lead associate roles, at 1.9% and 2.2% respectively. 

Mixed/multiple ethnicity and black women at senior associate level have a pay gap of 1.5%. 

Across the associate level 9 and 8 grades, the pay gaps are all in favour of minority ethnic women.