Mizuho is proud to be a founding signatory to the Women in Finance Charter. The Charter represents a genuine commitment by HM Treasury and signatory firms to work together to build a more balanced and fair industry that reflects the government's aspiration to see gender balance at all levels across financial services firms.
What is the Women in Finance Charter (WIFC)?
In March 2016, the UK government, via Her Majesty’s Treasury (HMT), launched the WIFC. The aim is to encourage the financial services industry to improve gender balance in senior management. The Charter now has more than 400 signatories covering 1.3 million across the financial services sector.
The four principles of the WIFC are:
- Having one member of the senior executive team who is responsible for gender diversity and inclusion;
- Setting internal targets for gender diversity in senior management;
- Publishing progress annually against these targets on a page on the company’s website dedicated to their Charter commitment; and
- Having an intention to ensure the pay of the senior executive team is linked to delivery against these internal targets on gender diversity.
Mizuho as a Founding Signatory
We are proud of our status as one of the founding signatories of the WIFC. As of end of August 2024, we had 23.5% female representation in senior management roles.
We remain strongly committed to our pledge and to making positive sustainable change. As such we have set a future aspirational target of 33% of senior management roles being held by females, by September 2030.
Key activities driving progress
Junior Talent: One of our key focuses is strengthening our junior talent pipeline. We continue to run our Graduate and Intern programmes committing to a 50:50 gender balance. Our Gender network has actively engaged with our female Interns requesting feedback on their experience during their programme. This feedback is being used to enhance our junior talent journey with us.
Building on the success of these programmes we are establishing an Apprenticeship and School Partnership programme to further widen the talent pool and enhance our diversity.
Career Development: To best support our female talent we focus on a number of aspects to develop and retain this key population. Our Elevate development programme is in its fourth year and forms part of our female leadership programme. Elevate is for women across the EMEA region, who are looking to enhance their skills, widen their internal profiles and work on specific development goals. Nurturing our female talent through such programmes ensures we are building a strong pipeline of women into senior management roles. This creates role models for the next generation of female talent by alumni from this programme participating as mentors in the junior female mentoring programme.
Starting this year, we have launched a Talent Grid as part of the firm’s talent management strategy, assisting with our efforts of identifying and developing female talent. Along with these we have been creating greater visibility of senior women in the business through a series of panel and fireside chats which we are using to help break barriers, challenge stereotypes and pave the way for other women to make an impact.
Internal Mobility: At Mizuho we are use internal mobility and temporary secondments to strengthen our retention. We believe these opportunities facilitate personal growth and career development by enabling employees to acquire new skills, take on diverse challenges, and progress within their chosen career paths.
Employee Networks: Our Inclusion networks continue to play a vital role in our employee engagement strategy. Collaboration across the networks allows us to take an intersectional approach to inclusion to drive real culture change. They support our employees by creating connections across the business, highlighting role models, and establishing a culture where all our employees feel able to bring their authentic selves to work.
To promote greater gender equality our Gender Network has created networking opportunities to drive collaboration between females. They are working to establish an Allyship programme and sessions to demystify the Gender Pay Gap, promotion process, and performance reviews.
Working in Partnership: Mizuho believes in the importance of partnering with external organisations and bodies with a DEI focus. This approach not only allows us to provide more support by working together with our partners towards shared values and goals, but we can maximise the impact of our efforts and achieve greater success.
Process Implementation
As we continue to work towards our WIFC target we are continually reviewing our processes to ensure that robust measures are in place. Recently we have revamped our Gender Balance Working Group to strengthen gender ratios in our candidate pipelines and diverse interview panels.