Canadian lenders pay women in U.K. less than men: figures

Bank of Nova Scotia and Toronto-Dominion Bank have some of the widest gender pay disparities among Canadian lenders in their U.K. operations, according to regulatory disclosures.

Scotiabank, Canada’s third-biggest lender, pays women 44 per cent less than men on average in the U.K., with the gap widening to 72 per cent for bonuses, according to regulatory disclosures. Scotiabank’s London operations fall under the bank’s capital markets division, where the bank employs about 300 people, of which 35 per cent are women.

“Scotiabank’s U.K. operations is solely a wholesale bank,” the lender said in a statement. “The industry-wide disproportionate representation of men in front office roles in this business impacts the extent of a pay gap. We know there is still work to be done to increase gender diversity at senior levels of the bank.”

Toronto-Dominion’s TD Securities operations saw women paid 43 per cent less than men, with the gap widening to 63 per cent for bonuses, a filing shows. TD has 284 staff in its European capital markets business, based in London. Of the ranks, 31 per cent are women.

“We look at our compensation programs on an ongoing basis to make sure that we are market competitive,” CEO Bharat Masrani told reporters last week.

“For a similar type of role we also strive to make sure that it is gender neutral. Unfortunately, some of these ratios that come out are not reflective. It’s not like-for-like jobs.”

The pay gaps at Canada’s banks stand in contrast to the feminist agenda pushed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Trudeau released a budget in February that includes funding to narrow the pay gap among federal employers, help women into male-dominated jobs and provide five weeks of paid leave for new fathers who stay at home.

Companies with 250 or more workers in Britain were required to report a uniform assessment of what women earn versus men by April 4. Some of the widest gaps have appeared at banks such as HSBC Holdings Plc and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which pay women less than half of what men earn on average. That’s largely because women are under-represented in senior roles.

Royal showed a range of disparity for its three U.K. entities — RBC Investor Services Trust, RBC Europe Ltd. and Royal Bank of Canada (London Branch). Across the divisions, women earn an average 39 per cent less than their male counterparts, and 69 per cent for bonuses, disclosures show. Among the Toronto-based bank’s U.K. units, the biggest gap was at RBC Europe, where women earned 51 per cent less than men.

Bank of Montreal, which owns F&C Asset Management in the U.K., had a pay gap of 34 per cent within its global asset management business in the nation, and 82-percent gap with bonuses, according to filings.