A

DIVERSITY& INCLUSIONREPORT
2023

CONTENTS

Executive Summary

3

Diversity & Inclusion Strategy

5

Increasing representation of women

9Gender Pay Gap9

How we’re increasing the representation of women 12
Propel, developing women for leadership

13

Hiring

14

Makeup of GeeCees

15

Self-identified data

15

Integrating GC Riga

17

Creating an inclusive environment

18

ERGs

18

Conclusion

21

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION REPORT2

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Welcome to our second annual Diversity and Inclusion(D&I) Report. In this report we outline our Gender
Pay Gap as part of the UK government requirement.
We also detail how we have increased the proportionof women at GoCardless and the further initiatives
that we have undertaken to increase inclusion.

As of June 2023, we had 906 employees (GeeCees)
with 713 based in the UK, 112 in Latvia and 81 across
our other offices. The total number of employees
has increased 9.8% year-on-year with us having
more than doubled the number of GeeCees
outside of the UK due to our acquisition of Latvian
open banking data company Nordigen. This takes
us from 95 to 193 GeeCees internationally.

Women

To ensure that we are representative of the world
around us and to be able to review relevantbenchmarks, we ask GeeCees to voluntarily
disclose diversity data. The number of GeeCees
that provided data increased from 75% to 80%
year-on-year. In regards to diversity within
GoCardless, we can see GeeCees identifying as:

Asian: 15% Black: 6% Mixed: 5% Other: 2%

42%
Identify as either Asian, Black, Mixed or Other

28%

LGBTQIA+

9%

Neurodiverse

9%

Disabled

2%

Average age of our workforce

33

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION REPORT3

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Over the past couple of years we have made a
conscious effort to ensure that we are hiring,retaining and promoting women into leadershiproles. Our commitment to increasing women within
our leadership population has had a positive impact
on our Gender Pay Gap and it has translated into:•

almost halving our median pay gap from 2019
to 22.7%•

decreasing our mean pay gap by 9.2pp to 24.4%
year-on-year•

maintaining our proportion of women companywide at 42%

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION REPORT

4

D&I STRATEGYREFLECT THE
OUTSIDE, INSIDE
We want GoCardless toaccurately represent the diverseworld around us

REPRESENTATION
MATTERS
Diversity needs to be reflected
at all levels but especially insenior positions

EQUITABLEOPPORTUNITY
Each GeeCee shouldhave a fair and equal chance
to succeed

LEADING WITH
INCLUSION
Managers will be equipped withthe tools to build a team where everyone
feels they can be themselves
DIVERSITY & INCLUSION REPORT

5

D&I STRATEGY

We’re building the world’s bank payment network.
But to do that we need to be representative of theworld around us.

Representation matters

That’s why we have set out a clear Diversity andInclusion (D&I) strategy with four pillars and theaim of making the GC journey irresistible, formany and more. Here is a summary of the various
initiatives we have delivered since our last report:

Reflect the outside, inside•

Updated diversity questions to be more inclusive,
resulting in 80% of GeeCees voluntarily disclosing
diversity data.

•

Created a cultural exchange programme
between GeeCees in our newly acquired Latvian
office and employees around the globe.

•

Partnered with external companies to increase
women at GC (Referly, Making Moves, Women inTech).

•

Increased women in leadership by 2pp to 32%.

•

Launched Propel, a women-focused leadershipprogramme.

•

Improved performance review process to be
more transparent about promotion cycles.

•

Ran workshops on Imposter Syndrome, Building
Resilience and Managing Difficult Conversations.

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION REPORT

6

D&I STRATEGY

Equitable opportunity

Leading with inclusion•

Ran de-biasing training for hiring managers•

Rolled out Managing Inclusive Teams training•

Hosted DEI 101 workshops to build foundational
knowledge••

Worked with our executive team to ensure
leaders apply D&I in all areas of decision-making

Ran a workshop in conjunction with Employee
Resource Group (ERG) Access to equip managers
with knowledge to manage neurodiverse
GeeCees•

Trained managers in how to be great sponsors offemale leaders

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION REPORT

7

D&I STRATEGY

GoCardless values diversity and inclusion, as we
believe it is essential to innovation and success.
We have focused our efforts on embedding this
into our culture so it becomes a part of every
People process or every manager’s role - this way
we have many more people driving the agenda
and delivering on the benefits of a diverse andinclusive workplace.

Lena Tailor
VP, Business Partnering,
Talent Development & Inclusion,
GoCardless

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION REPORT8

INCREASING REPRESENTATION

Gender Pay Gap
We care deeply about the representation of
women across the company and so we use theGender Pay Gap (GPG) reporting process toannually review our progress.
The Gender Pay Gap is a UK legal requirement forcompanies with over 250 employees which looks at
the mean and median differences in the pay of men
and women. In line with the legal requirements, ourdata is taken from the 5th April 2023 and only includes
our UK workforce. Out of a total of 727 UK GeeCees,
44% were women.

Note that the Gender Pay Gap is not the same as thelegal requirement for Equal Pay, which means men
and women doing the same job are paid the sameamount.
We also understand that gender is much wider
than the binary of man and woman. However, forthe purposes of Gender Pay Gap reporting we must
use legal gender. Nevertheless, we recognise thatgender is not only binary and in the self-identification
data that we collect for internal use, we reflect this
distinction.

BENCHMARK
Mean GPG across industries
30%
27%
20%

26%

24.4%

22%

14.9%

10%

0%
GOCARDLESS GPG

TECH GPGFINSERV GPG

FINTECH GPG

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION REPORT9UK GPGINCREASING REPRESENTATION

While we still have work to do, we are encouraged tosee a downward trend when it comes to our mean
and median gender pay gap. While the mean can bevolatile year-on-year due to outliers, it is positive to
see that it has reduced significantly to 24.4% in 2023,
the lowest since we started reporting our numbers in
2019. Our median pay gap has also continued on its
downward trend to 22.7%.

For our Bonus Pay Gap, our mean has also reduced
to 29.0% which is more than 10pp lower than theindustry average of 39.7%. Our median bonus pay
gap has also reduced by more than half to 20.2%
compared to 50% in 2022.

GOCARDLESS GENDER PAY GAP SINCE 2019

2022

2023

2019 vs 2023

2022 vs 2023

GoCardless GPG Mean

33.6%

24.4%

-11.4pp-9.2pp

GoCardless GPG Median

23.6%

22.7%

-19.2pp-0.9pp

GoCardless Mean Bonus

50.0%

29.0%

-19.3pp-21.0pp

GoCardless Median Bonus

50.0%

20.2%

-4.7pp-29.8pp● Mean ● Median
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%

2019

2020

2021

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION REPORT

10

2022

2023

INCREASING REPRESENTATION

There is a noticable shift in the distribution of womenin GoCardless when we look at the pay quartiles.
You can also see that there is an increase in womenin our upper middle and upper quartile by 5pp and3pp respectively. When we first reported data in 2019,
we only had 15% women in our upper quartile.

We have also begun balancing our lower quartile andhave decreased the percentage of women by 7pp
since 2022.
By having a more balanced workforce across our pay
quartiles, we can begin closing our Gender Pay Gap.

DATA OVERVIEW● Women ● Men

65%

35%
2022

58%

42%

2023

LOWER
QUARTILE

47%

53%

2022

29%

34%

71%

66%

53%

47%

2023

2022

LOWER MIDDLEQUARTILE

2023

UPPER MIDDLEQUARTILE

I confirm the accuracy of these numbers in line with
the Equalities Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information)
Regulations 2017.
Hiroki Takeuchi
Co-founder and CEO
GoCardless

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION REPORT

11

24%

27%

76%

73%

2022

2023

UPPER
QUARTILE

INCREASING REPRESENTATION

How we’re increasing
the representation of women
Last year we created company-wide goals,
supported by our Executive team, for better gender
representation of women at GoCardless.
We are making progress on these goals, especiallyat middle management, but we remain focused onincreasing women in our leadership population.
However, through developing the women in our
middle management population, we are filling thepipeline to reach our goal for the leadership team.

•

37% of women in Sales (+3pp from
June 2022)•

32% of women in Leadership (+2pp from
June 2022)

The proportion of women in our ProductDevelopment team globally has decreased to28% (-3pp from June 2022) due to the acquisitionof Nordigen. In Latvia as a whole, 23% of all IT
professionals were women compared to 28% of
women in fintech in the UK. However, when we lookat our Product Development team in the UK, it has agreater proportion of women than the same team in
Latvia. We will look to improve this balance.

When it comes to male-dominated areas such as
Sales and Leadership, we are pleased to see that weare increasing the proportion of women. As of June
2023, we have:

WOMEN REPRESENTATION● Current (June 2023) ● 2025 Goal
50%
50%
45%

40%
40%
30%

45%

38%

32%

20%

10%

0%
LEADERSHIP
Director and above
population

MIDDLE MANAGEMENT
Senior manager
population

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION REPORT12JUNIOR
Rest of businessINCREASING REPRESENTATION

Propel, developing womenfor leadership
At the beginning of the year, we launched a newleadership programme called Propel aimed at
supporting high-potential women to progress
into leadership. Participants are spread across thecompany, with women from our Sales, Engineering,Marketing, Risk and Customer teams.
Research tells us that women benefit fromdifferentiated, tailored support to overcome any
barriers to progression and gain – and sustain– a leadership role. As such, we believe that thisprogramme will support the advancement of women
into leadership.

It makes me feel proud to work for a company thatwants to support women in leadership.
Propel participant
on Propel programme

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION REPORT

13

INCREASING REPRESENTATION

HiringWe have made a conscious effort to hire more womenat GoCardless, particularly in our Sales and ProductDevelopment teams and in leadership positions.
We have made a conscious effort to hire more
women at GoCardless, particularly in our Sales andProduct Development teams and in leadership
positions. We know that these areas are particularly
male-dominated so they require extra focus toachieve gender balance.

•

Some of the initiatives that we have undertaken
include:•30% of applicants in Product Development were
women, a 7pp increase year-on-year•

Hosting de-biasing training with hiring managers•

39% of hires in Product Development were
women, a 5pp increase year-on-year•

Ensuring that we have a balanced interview panel
with at least one woman•

39% of hires into mid-management andleadership positions were women•

Running our job ads through a gender decoder
to ensure that it does not use language biased
towards certain genders•

Updating our job descriptions to encourage abroader range of applicants•

Trialling the removal of sensitive information (e.g.
photos/names) from LinkedIn hiring to reduce
biases•Partnering with Referly, Making Moves andWomen in Tech to increase our candidate pool toreach more women

Creating internships that specifically encourage
people from diverse backgrounds to apply to
GoCardlessSince these initiatives we have seen some promising
results:

We want to make sure that everyone has a great
experience with GoCardless from the moment thatthey apply to the moment they leave. Therefore,
we have been looking to improve our recruitment
process to make it more welcoming to peopleof all backgrounds. After an interview, we ask
candidates to feedback on how they have foundour process. We’re encouraged to see that our D&I
related questions, which are based on the themesof being your authentic self, respectful hiring andour commitment to D&I, have received an averagesatisfaction score of 9.2 out of 10.

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION REPORT

14

MAKE UP OF GEECEES

Self-identified data
We ask GeeCees to voluntarily submit anonymised
diversity data so we can understand the makeup of
the company.
The data below is from June 2023 when 80% of
our 900 GeeCees answered at least one diversity
question. In the six months since GoCardlessacquired Nordigen, 62% of Latvia employees haveanswered at least one question. You can see thebreakdown of our wider data below.

NOTES
Where figures are 0%, it may indicate some numbers are too
low to report. The UK and Latvia are reported separately asthese regions comprise the majority of our workforces. Due tothe smaller number of GeeCees in Australia, France and the US
we have grouped them together. However, we understand thedifference in diversity in each country.

Demographic

GC

UK

LV

AU/FR/US

Leadership

Women(using legal gender)

42%

44%

31%

43%

32%

Asian, Black, Mixed
or Other

28%

32%

9%

14%

21%

LGBTQIA+

9%

9%

7%

11%

6%

Neurodiverse

9%

9%

13%

5%

6%

Disabled

2%

2%

0%

2%

0%

No further education

7%

8%

10%

0%

0%

Age

33

34

30

34

42

Asian: 15%
Black: 6%
Mixed: 5%
Other: 2%

43 for women
42 for men

Gender non-conforming

N/A**Diversity question was changed to be more inclusive so there is currently a low response rate.

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION REPORT

15

MAKE UP OF GEECEESThis data continues to help us review how we’re
doing and identify the areas where we need to takemore action. For example, since we last reported we
can see a 2pp decrease in GeeCees who identify as
Asian, Black, Mixed or Other. We understand this to bea result of acquiring a company in Latvia, an Eastern
Europe country which has lower ethnic diversity.
Overall, GoCardless is above the industry averagefor ethnic diversity for our UK, Riga and Leadership
populations. In the UK, 18% of the population identifies
as Asian, Black, Mixed or Other while in London it is46.2%. For Riga and Leadership populations, it is 7%
and 13% respectively. Because the largest numberof GeeCees are based in London, we will continue tolook at ways to increase representation here.

It’s a similar case when looking at sexual orientation.
Since June 2022 we have seen the percentage of
GeeCees that identify as LGBTQIA+, decrease by 1pp
However, we believe this could be partially due to thelack of positive LGBTQIA+ laws in Latvia. We support
our LGBTQIA+ colleagues regardless of where they
live and GeeCees marched at the Riga Pride parade inJune 2023.
The percentage of GeeCees who identify as
neurodiverse or disabled has remained steady at
9% and 2% respectively. However, with disabled
people being twice as likely to be unemployedcompared to non-disabled people, we can do more
to attract disabled candidates. In August 2022, webecame a Level 1 committed Disability Confident
Employer. We also trained managers in skills tomanage neurodiverse GeeCees and ensured closed
captioning is enabled for all Zoom meetings.

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION REPORT

16

MAKE UP OF GEECEES

Integrating GC Riga
In 2022, we announced the acquisition of Nordigen,an open banking data company in Latvia, and began the
integration of the employees into the business in 2023.
As part of the integration process, we undertook astudy to further understand the culture of Latvia sothat we could create a mutual culture of inclusivity.

Some of the initiatives that have taken place as partof this include company-wide education posts tomark Latvia’s Independence Day, improving internal
processes and communications, and generating
networking opportunities. Riga GeeCees also went
through the company’s DEI 101 workshop and thefeedback showed participants increased theirconfidence in speaking about diversity and inclusion
by 16pp pre- and post-workshop.

From these insights, an integration group was
created that focused on bridging the culturalgap between the two businesses, implementing
operational best practices and building connections
between teams.

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION REPORT

17

ERGs

Creating an inclusive environment
At GoCardless we have five ERGs that aim toprovide a space for GeeCees to connect, belong
and support one another.
Whilst there are huge benefits of having a diverse
workforce, diversity can only thrive when people feellike they can bring their full selves to work.

The D&I Team strive to create an environment foreveryone to feel included which is complemented
by our well-established and long-running Employee
Resource Groups (ERGs). The groups are:AccessMindfulSupporting the needsof neurodiverse anddisabled GeeCees

Increasing awarenessand inclusivity aroundmental health

BEAM

Pride

Representing Black,
Ethnic, Asian andMinority GeeCees

Ensuring our LGBTQIA+
community feels
represented andempowered

Inspiring
Encouraging genderequality at GoCardless

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION REPORT

18

ERGs

Our ERGs also work to empower and advocate for
GeeCees. Some notable initiatives they have led
include:•Participating in a mentoring programme with
Career Accelerator in collaboration with BEAM,
Inspiring and Pride.

••

Supporting GeeCees with a prayer room.

•

Partnering with Juno to provide 3 financial
wellbeing workshops on budgeting, investing
and long-term planning.

•

Providing educational resources during Trans
Awareness Week.

•

Ensuring closed captioning is automaticallyenabled for any company-wide meetings foraccessibility needs.
Organising a leadership shadowing programme
for junior women and gender non-conforming
GeeCees to understand what is needed toprogress into leadership.

Examples of events run by our ERGs:

BEAM. Panel on Being Black in the workplace

Inspiring. Networking event with panellists acrossthe tech industry

Pride. Riga team celebrating Pride

Inspiring x Mindful. Internal panel on mental healthand hormones

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION REPORT

19

ERGs

BEAM. Celebrating a GeeCee’s nomination at theBlack Tech Awards

Access. Disabled comedian Aaron Simmonds
comedy show

Inspiring x Pride. Queer Brewing beer tasting with
Beer with Nat

BEAM. Celebration of Lunar New Year

Mindful. Executive Sponsor providing mental
health guidance

Access. Providing education resources on different
ADHD symptoms in men and women

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION REPORT

20

CONCLUSION

Our vision is to become the world’s bank payment
network. It’s a big ambition which requires a highperforming, talented team – and that means gathering
people with a range of views and experiences so we
can constantly challenge each other to make the best
decisions for our customers and the business.
It’s encouraging to see that our efforts to increase
the proportion of women at GoCardless has led to anarrowing of the gender pay gap and the distributionof women is becoming more balanced. But there is
still work to be done. I and the executive team remaincommitted to creating a diverse, inclusive and fairworkplace for everyone and we will continue to pushtowards the targets we’ve set.

Hiroki Takeuchi
Co-founder and CEO
GoCardless

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION REPORT

21

For PR enquiries contact:press@gocardless.com
Or visit:
https://gocardless.com/about/diversity-inclusion/