RBS boss pledges diversity action

Ross Mcewan, the chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland, has pledged to help tackle at the Edinburgh-based lender what he has called the “too white and too male” culture prevailing throughout Britain’s boardrooms.

While Mr Mcewan stressed that he feels RBS has made strides in promoting women into senior roles, he acknowledged that the still 72 per cent state-owned bank, still has more to do, particularly in terms of ethnic diversity.

He said: “We’ve set ourselves the target of having initially 30 per cent of our top 700 executives as females by the end of 2020.

“We actually reached that target last year, so have changed the target to make it more difficult.

Mr McEwan was speaking out in the same week as data from corporate recruitment consultants Green Park showed 58 per cent of FTSE 100 boardrooms still have no ethnic minority representation.

“Ethnicity, I think, is a big issue for this organisation”, said Mr McEwan.

“We need to be reflecting the types of people our customers are.

“Too white and too male is something that we’re now starting to concentrate on.

“I think it’s beyond the male and female and I think there are a lot of other areas that we should be thinking about as well.”

In terms of gender equality, Mr McEwan said that RBS is working with interest groups to make changes and will publish statistics on gender pay in September.

“Really what you look at, job for job with the experience, are the people being paid the same?” he said.

“That’s what I’m interested in and that’s what we review on an annual basis. Are people doing the same job getting the same pay, as opposed to how many females have I got in more clerically oriented roles versus people in management?”