Senior white male recruits have to get a final sign-off from the boss of Aviva who became the insurer’s first female chief executive in 2020.
Amanda Blanc, 56, told MPs on the Treasury Select Committee: “There is no non-diverse hire at Aviva without it being signed off by me and the chief people officer.”
She added the procedure wasn’t because she did not trust her team: “I want to make sure that the process followed for that recruitment has been diverse, has been properly done and is not just a phone call to a mate to say, ‘would you like a job, pop up and we’ll fix it up for you’.”
Ms Blanc was speaking at the Sexism in the City Inquiry. The Treasury Committee is examining the barriers faced by women in financial services and progress made in removing gender pay gaps.
She was speaking as part of the third public hearing of its sexism inquiry, which was launched after harassment allegations rocked the business world.
The 56-year-old was speaking only about senior hires at Aviva, which has 22,000 staff overall. Ms Blanc, warned that sexism in the financial services sector is worse than in wider society.
She told MPs that while she had some “very positive experiences” in the industry but “many women do not”.
Blanc, who also sits on BPs board, revealed women across the industry had been writing to her as she prepared for her hearing. They documented “appalling” accounts of harassment including unwanted sexual advances.
Mrs Blanc said Aviva, which is based in the City of London, had acted to sack male employees for inappropriate behaviour.
She told MPs: “Every individual firm has to be accountable for any allegations such as this, and the women in the firm have to know that there is a process for speaking up, that that process will be acted on, that everything will be investigated, and that the person who did the bad leaves the organisation, not the women.”
Ms Blanc, who lives in Hampshire with her husband and two daughters has held senior roles in insurance and has chaired the Professional Rugby Board for Wales before stepping down in 2021.
The Treasury select committee’s inquiry has also heard evidence of ongoing discrimination and harassment in the industry, as well as a persistently high pay gap.
Fund management grandee Baroness Morrissey told the committee in October that sexism was “endemic” across financial services and is still run by an “old boys’ network”.
Labour MP Angela Eagle also said in the industry, “a series of well-known bad apples that nobody ever does anything about” continued to operate.
