Treating everyone we deal with fairly and equally is central to the work we do.
Fostering a culture that goes beyond equality – one that promotes equity and embraces our differences
Our customers
We’re committed to:
- making sure that our service is accessible to everyone
- drawing on our understanding of equality law, where relevant, in our responses
- sharing our knowledge and expertise with financial businesses and other stakeholders, including how inequalities can impact customers
Our colleagues
Being diverse and inclusive means that we can better understand our customer’s different perspectives and backgrounds, which is fundamental to our job resolving financial complaints.
We’re committed to:
- attracting and developing people from a wide range of backgrounds to reflect the diversity of our customers and the population as a whole
- using policies and guidelines to support our colleagues’ needs throughout their career with us
- reporting each year on diversity, inclusion and wellbeing
- sharing information about working at the Financial Ombudsman, our culture and the ways we support our colleagues
Our community
We want to reach groups of consumers who are under-represented in their contact with us or may face barriers in bringing complaints to us – for example, because of language difficulties or disabilities.
To do this, we:
- volunteer with local communities
- meet businesses, trade associations and consumer groups across the UK
- educate our colleagues on consumer’s different needs, especially if they’re vulnerable
- learn from the charities and other partners we work with
Find out more about how we work with other organisations.
Our work in more detail
2,578
colleagues
55%
women
37%
ethnic minorities
We’re pleased to have reached our two-year fundraising target for Sands - baby loss charity in just 12 months, raising over £32,000.
Our colleagues took part in a range of activities to raise money including bake sales, skydiving, nighttime hike up Mount Snowdon, charity football matches and much more.
This partnership has not only raised vital funds but also sparked important conversations about pregnancy and baby loss here at the Financial Ombudsman Service.
A huge thank you to everyone who contributed and to Sands for delivering sessions with our colleagues to raise awareness and our understanding of the issue.
These are some of the memberships and groups we partner with, to align with best practice and continually push ourselves to improve.
Women in Finance Charter
We’re signatories to the Women in Finance Charter. Over 350 organisations have signed to commit to improving gender diversity at senior levels in the financial services sector.
Disability Confident Leader
We’re proud to be a Disability Confident Leader level 3 employer, the highest accreditation. A scheme led by Department for Work and Pension that helps employers recruit and retain great people and draw from the widest possible pool of talent.
Menopause workplace pledge
We’ve signed the Menopause Workplace Pledge, through this initiative, we hope to reduce the stigma and encourage better understanding of the menopause.
Race at Work Charter
We’ve signed the Business in the Community Race at Work Charter, an initiative designed to improve equal opportunities for ethnic minorities in the workplace.
Mindful Employer
We have signed the Charter for Employers Positive about Mental Health, making us a certified Mindful Employer.
Carer Confident
We’re proud to have attained Carer Confident accomplished status, the Employers for Carers benchmarking scheme that supports employers to build a positive and inclusive workplace for staff who are or will become carers.
We have an important job to do for our customers, but we also understand the importance of support networks and social activities for our colleagues.
We want our colleagues to be healthy and motivated, so we help to look after physical and mental wellbeing and promote learning and development.
We’re really pleased to have a wide range of employee-led networks, that play an important role in our diversity and inclusion and help us understand what really matters to our colleagues.
Here are examples of some the work of our employee networks in the past year:
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Our Enable network organised an online event to mark International Day of Persons with Disabilities and celebrate Purple Light Up.
Enable spoke about the importance of diversity and inclusion in the workplace, and highlighted the role that our employee networks play in raising awareness and educating our colleagues on key issues. -
The theme of 2024’s Black History Month was Reclaiming Narratives. To mark this, our employee-led network, Embrace, organised a calendar of events. This included an engaging and lively session with Michael Barrington-Hibbert and David Olusoga, focusing on this year’s theme.
Embrace also organised actions throughout October to help us all:
- learn about the experiences of other colleagues
- reflect on our own actions, and
- commit to ongoing action to support a more racially inclusive environment
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In June 2025, the Carers’ network organised a session with Carers UK to celebrate Carers week.
We discussed the challenges working carers face and how we, as an organisation, can support our people with caring responsibilities.
Raising awareness of these challenges is a key focus for the Carers’ network – as is helping people self-identify as carers.
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To celebrate pride month 2025, our LGBT+ employee network, OutRight and colleagues marched at Pride in London and Coventry.
In London, we marched with a group of LBGT networks that includes the FCA, FSCS, Bank of England and other members in the Financial Services regulatory family.
In early 2021, we lost our friend and long-time colleague, Juliana Francis. Juliana was our Head of Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing, a hugely experienced Ombudsman, and a driving force for inclusivity across the organisation.
About the award
We launched the Juliana Francis Inclusion and Wellbeing Award in honour of Juliana, her achievements and the ongoing work she inspired.
The award recognises and celebrates the work of colleagues whose contributions help to embed inclusion and wellbeing in the organisation.
The winner receives funding towards an activity or course to support their development or wellbeing. We also showcase their work in this area and celebrate some of the highly commended submissions.
Our inclusion strategy
Our diversity, inclusion and wellbeing strategy, Together we Thrive, brings together a set of commitments to foster a culture that goes beyond equality – one that promotes equity and embraces our differences.
Our strategy is defined by four main pillars. These set out our key focus and what we plan to do to help us meet our pay gap target and improve representation in our workforce.
We’re aiming to:
- reach 50% female representation in senior roles by 2026, and
- reduce our gender pay gap to 2% and our ethnicity pay gap below 10% by 2027.
Our four main pillars
You can read more about our progress and plans for each of our four main pillars below.
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We want everyone who works with us to feel a sense of belonging.
What we’ve done
- introduced a new Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing Board focused on localising actions
- implemented a new equity sequencing approach to drive equity through innovation, embedding this into our governance processes
- created pathways for career development from our customer call hub teams, with changes to pay and grading, and
- started external mentoring circles to support career growth and increase representation in our talent groups.
What we’re planning to do
We’re taking a more active role in inclusion – making a conscious effort to understand and address barriers, so we're planning to:
- diversify the talent pipeline through our succession planning and career progression pathways
- build equity through innovation, and
- take a localised approach to action planning and encourage everyone to take meaningful action.
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We want to achieve diversity of thought and innovation by retaining our people and attracting from the widest possible pool of talent.
What we’ve done
- introduced a parent buddying system to support those returning from family leave, and employee and manager toolkits, and
- published our disability pay gap for the first time to track and monitor our progress, and identify areas for improvements.
What we’re planning to do
- increase our focus on socio-economic diversity, through early careers, outreach and work experience
- introduce reciprocal mentoring opportunities, and
- increasing our disability disclosure so we can identify and address any gaps in pay or progression.
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Fairness is not only about achieving fair outcomes for our customers but embracing equitable ways of working.
What we’ve done
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made improvements in data collection, which enhance our ability to track impact, identify gaps, and make informed decisions
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created diversity dashboards to support strategy delivery, bringing together key insights across the service to monitor progress and highlight areas needing attention.
What we’re planning to do
We will review our current policies and processes to ensure fairness is embedded into our everyday work by:
- maintaining our commitment to the Race at Work Charter, being ‘Disability Confident’ and supporting Women in Finance
- addressing key contributors to our pay gaps in recruitment, retention and representation with a bespoke action plan, and
- building a more inclusive recruitment framework to set the standard and support our hiring managers
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Covid-19 showed us the value of being prepared. So, we’ve shifted our approach from reactive to proactive support.
What we’ve done
- introduced financial education and coaching
- developed our safeguarding framework to ensure the safety and wellbeing of all individuals who use our services
- launched inclusive wellbeing support for men's health, menopause, and neurodiversity assessments, hitting 155% of our target registration numbers in the first month, and
- introduced regular wellbeing initiatives and events throughout the year to raise awareness, improve staff engagement, and celebrate progress.
What we’re planning to do
We’re providing more opportunities for early intervention and good wellbeing practices, such as:
- introducing wellbeing champions to promote health and wellbeing within teams
- promoting our health and wellbeing benefits, and
- launching manager mental health training, including learning sessions to discuss real-life case studies and identify tools and resources.
