Workplace Gender Equality Reporting 2022-2023

MLC Life Insurance Employer Statement

Our commitment to gender equality

At MLC Life Insurance, we are committed to creating a culture that is diverse, inclusive, and reflective of our community and our customers. We are guided by the ambition of our founder, James Garvan - to make life insurance accessible to every Australian. We know that to deliver on that ambition, we need a diverse and inclusive workforce, where our people and our customers feel they belong.

As an organisation, we are committed to gender equality. We strive to integrate this commitment into the way we work, our policies and strategies, and into how we engage with our customers and partners. We have a strong commitment from our Board and Executive team towards achieving gender equality.

Despite progress in recent years, we recognise there is still work to do to decrease our pay gap across the organisation. We continue to focus on increasing diversity and representation at all levels of our organisation and our aim is to foster a culture that encourages and supports everyone to ‘bring their best to life’, which we believe will have a positive impact on our gender pay gap and, on our workforce, overall.

Our reward strategy

Our reward strategy recognises and rewards the contribution of all our employees. We encourage behaviours that support prudent risk taking and superior customer outcomes, we differentiate performance outcomes, and we undertake regular reviews of remuneration through a gender lens.

What is the gender pay gap?

Private sector companies in Australia that employ 100 or more employees must comply with the reporting requirements of the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 (Cth). This includes reporting the aggregate pay gap data to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA).

WGEA calculate the gender pay gap, which is the difference in average earnings between women and men across an organisation, regardless of role or level. This is different to Equal Pay, which legislates that men and women must receive equal pay if they are in the same employment performing work of equal or comparable value.

Our gender pay gap and organisational context

Our 2022-23 median total remuneration gender pay gap is 11.6% and the median base salary gender pay gap is 11.1%. Our pay gaps are lower than our Industry Comparison Group1 at 22.3% and 20.1% respectively.

To understand our gender pay gap, it’s helpful to understand the composition of our workforce. Our core business is to provide life insurance to our customers. MLC Life Insurance has over 1300 employees, spanning diverse roles and professional backgrounds. Approximately 57% of our total workforce is female.

In 2022, we set Sustainability Goals2 including gender diversity targets for our senior leaders and for the Independent Directors on our Board of 40:40:20 (a minimum of 40% women, 40% men, and 20% of any gender identity). We aimed to achieve the senior leadership target by end of 2023, and the Independent Directors target by end 2025. We are pleased to confirm that we achieved the 2023 senior leadership target, including in our Executive team. We are on track and continue to work towards maintaining the achievement of the target for our Board by 2025. As of February 2024, our Board consists of two female and three male Independent Directors.

Our gender pay gap drivers

Closing the gender pay gap is a key element of our commitment to gender equality.

One of the key drivers of our gender pay gap is the distribution of males and females in our organisation. We have a larger representation of females in our lower (59%), lower middle (65%) and upper middle quartiles (57%) and a smaller representation of females in our upper quartile (46%).

Although there is still work to do to achieve a balanced distribution of genders at each level of our business, positively we have a higher percentage of women in our Key Management Personnel, Manager and Non-Manager roles compared to our Industry Comparison Group.

Our gender equality actions and strategies

We know that a commitment to gender equality must be embedded across every stage of our employee lifecycle and are proud of our achievements to date:

  • Recruitment: we will continue to adopt language in our recruitment processes that is reflective of our inclusive culture and that encourages candidates from a wide range of backgrounds to apply. When selecting candidates for interview, our Talent Acquisition team will proactively source a diverse range of candidates.
  • Lateral Moves: we will continue to focus on career development, supporting lateral and cross-departmental moves that help employees to broaden their skills and experience.
  • Setting and Reviewing Remuneration: pay equity will continue to be a key focus for us when making remuneration decisions. We will review salary and incentive outcomes through a gender lens, ensuring fair and equitable treatment of our employees. We will also continue to report on our gender pay gap to our Executive team and Board.
  • Policies and Support: we will continue to support flexible working, including providing support to employees returning to work after a break. We will also continue to promote the policies that support our employees including paid parental and carers leave, paid domestic violence leave, and support for families.
  • Performance, Development and Talent Management: we will continue to review all performance, development, and talent management processes through a gender lens; ensuring fair treatment of all employees.
  • Employee Feedback: we believe that hearing the voice of our employees is important and therefore we will continue to listen to our employees through our regular engagement surveys, our employee action and listening groups, and through our exit surveys.

We recognise that ongoing focus is required, and we continue to strive to ensure that everyone feels that they can engage and excel at MLC Life Insurance, and that they are valued and respected.

When we are at our best, we can achieve great outcomes for our customers, partners, and each other.

 

1. The Industry Comparison Group is generated by a combination of the Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification (ANZSIC) industry class and equivalent sized organisations. ANZSIC is the national framework for classifying industries according to the primary activities of organisations.

2. MLC Life Insurance, Our sustainability beliefs and goals, available here.