QBE is creating a diverse and inclusive workplace that respects all employees, irrespective of their differences – visible and invisible. This is essential for attracting and developing the best people. We want a diverse workforce as we know this will generate better outcomes.
Delivering a clear message
We are pleased to have been signed up to the Women in Finance Charter, an initiative by HM Treasury and financial services firms to build a more balanced, fairer industry since 2018.
Since then, women in leadership across our European Operations population has grown from 27% to 38.3% at the end of August 2025. Whilst we achieved our Global Women in Leadership target of 40% by the end of December 2023, two years ahead of our deadline of 2025, we also recognise our responsibility to ensure we are driving progress at a divisional level. Whilst we are not on track to achieve our divisional target of 40% at the end of this year, we have continued to see a positive increase in our senior female representation. We recognise there is more we need to do to build stronger women in leadership representation, and we have established a clear action plan of how we plan to achieve this over the forthcoming years.
We will continue to embed the actions outlined in our Women in Leadership plan to ensure we are building an inclusive culture and nurturing the existing and future talent at QBE, to achieve our desired outcome of 40% senior female representation across European Operations.
We continue to monitor our Sense of Belonging targets that were established in 2023, ensuring that our colleagues, regardless of gender, feel like they belong in our organisational culture. In October 2023, we successfully closed the belonging gap between our male and female colleagues, and in October 2024, we were able to close the belonging gaps for all genders, ethnicity, sexuality and disability. We will review this again in October 2025, aiming to maintain these closed gaps. We continue to explore ways of further supporting the belonging of our people, including empowering flexible approaches to work. Our Flex@QBE approach is designed to give people the power to flex the way they work in a way that ensures we are enhancing performance and supporting effective work/life balance. We are committed to continually reviewing our approach which includes remote working abroad, flexible public holidays, and embracing flexible working structures, such as part time positions and compressed hour contracts.
The wellbeing and safety of our people continues to be a top priority. We have evolved our approach to wellbeing to become much more than just programmes, apps, tools and nice to have resources, to an approach that has been designed to enable a more resilient future for our people to thrive. Our internal portal, At Our Best, sets out our holistic view across five key areas of wellbeing: work life blend, finance, health, community, and career.
We continue to support the growth of our current and future female leaders, highlighted by our partnership with ISC Group which started in June 2024. Through this partnership, our International female colleagues can access the ISC Group community which is tailored to fit the unique stage of each journey, from those beginning their careers to those in executive positions. The launch of our Career Hub is a powerful new platform that empowers every colleague to take ownership of their development, offering personalised access to learning, mentoring, and internal opportunities.
This year we also saw the relaunch of our EO Circle network, striving for gender equity and raising awareness, highlighting the importance of bringing male voices into this space knowing that these conversations need all of us to drive progress. Through using their voices, we aim to drive tangible change throughout QBE and the wider industry for all genders. Alongside our Women in Reinsurance community (WiRe), launched in 2024, and our Women in Tech community, we are committed to ensuring that our people have platforms to connect and champion change.
Our in-house Talent Acquisition team are dedicated to driving more female representation throughout financial services, looking beyond traditional talent pools to attract diverse talent. Our Inclusive Hiring Principles are designed to guide and support our Hiring Managers throughout the recruitment process to reflect on traditional ways of recruiting and consider opportunities to leverage new sources of talent. Our partnerships with Women in Data, DiverseJobsMatter and iCAN, to name a few, are all designed to expand our reach to untapped talent pools and encourage diverse talent to apply.
Equipping our people with the correct awareness and knowledge around gender ensures our progress towards a resilient and inclusive culture. Across 2025, we delivered a series of experiential Inclusion Workshops to over 70% of UK People Leaders, with plans to expand to Europe and Asia, as well as continuing to deliver sessions as part of our learning offering. This year also saw the launch of our global minimum parental leave standards, where we have equalised our paid Maternity, Paternity, Adoption and Surrogacy Leave across International, and as of July 2025, all QBE employees have access to a minimum of 12 weeks paid parental leave when they welcome a new child into their family, regardless of gender or how they become a parent. Moreover, we have continued to champion our flexible approach, refreshing our UK Flexible Working Policy & Process, including the introduction of Flexible Working Toolkit to support leaders.
As we move towards the end of 2025, and into 2026, we are committed to creating real change and supporting our people work at their best.
Jason Harris, CEO of QBE European Operations, is our nominated executive responsible for this initiative.