Insurers unite to improve female financial futures
Insurers, professional bodies, guidance services and financial advisers have revealed what they will do to support Insuring Women’s Futures, a Chartered Insurance Institute-led initiative to empower women to improve their financial futures.
The Government will be lobbied for changes to auto-enrolment, pension freedoms and sharing rules to make sure the gender pay gap, motherhood, caring and relationship breakdowns do not create impoverished female pensioners in the future.
In addition, insurers have committed to offer flexible working and to develop inclusive practices for all consumers in a move to improve women’s financial futures.
The Insuring Women’s Futures initiative brought together 150 financial services professionals to collate data and form a plan of how to improve female financial resilience.
The initiative has explored the financial decisions women of all ages are having to make and the way they are currently penalised when it comes to the pound in their pockets compared to their male counterparts.
At an event at the BFI Imax in Waterloo yesterday (November) 19, Insuring Women’s Futures detailed what further work – such as employers being required to disclose gender pension contribution gaps to inform improvements to pension scheme design – needs to take place to improve women’s financial resilience.
Other recommendations outlined by the Insuring Women’s Futures initiative include equipping young women to make financially informed study choices; creating a national conversation around care including carers’ pensions; and collecting and using gender disaggregated data to inform policy and supervision.
Jane Portas, author of the report and co-founder of Insuring Women’s Futures, said: “By focusing on key ‘moments that matter’ interventions across the female financial life journey, together we have the power to make practical, meaningful and lasting change.
“These cross-cutting recommendations present an opportunity for each and every one of us to act in the ‘moment that matters’ and by doing so we will all benefit from change.”
Sian Fisher, chair of Insuring Women’s Futures and CEO of the Chartered Insurance Institute, added: “We know some of the issues needing to be addressed are deep-rooted and will take time to have full effect. We need to empower people to come together to talk about their financial life.”
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