NEW YORK: JPMorgan Chase & Co said on Friday that its female employees earn 99 per cent of what male employees make globally, making it the fifth large US bank to disclose an adjusted gender pay gap of around 1pc.

People of colour employed by the bank earned more than 99pc of what white workers made, according to an internal note sent to employees. The company is strongly committed to diversity, said Robin Leopold, head of human resources, adding, “We know we can always do more, and we will.”

As a growing number of financial firms reveal whether men and women are compensated equally, they have clustered around 99pc parity, after adjusting for factors such as job role, seniority and locale. In addition to Wells Fargo & Co, Bank of America Corp, Citigroup Inc and Bank of New York Mellon Corp, MasterCard Inc last week reported that its gender pay gap was around 1pc.

The numbers stand in stark contrast to the average gender pay gap in the US, which has hovered around 20pc since 2007, according to the National Women’s Law Center.

JPMorgan’s workforce is about evenly split among men and women, but women remain underrepresented at senior levels. Men make up 70pc of executives and 83pc of corporate directors, according to data from the Bloomberg Financial-Services Gender Equality Index.

The new disclosures anticipate the looming deadline for all companies employing more than 250 people in the UK to publish their unadjusted gender pay gap numbers for their British employees — a requirement that will include the big US banks.

While the recent spate of voluntary disclosures have highlighted very small adjusted discrepancies, JPMorgan seemed to be warning employees that its UK filing may paint a different picture.

“The bare numbers, excluding these types of factors, will show a gap between the pay of men and women,” the firm wrote in its memo. “But we have found that employees are paid appropriately when taking into consideration their business area, their experience and the work they do.”

Few global banks have filed their UK disclosures. On Thursday, Barclays Plc said it pays female employees at its investment banking division about half of what men make. On Friday, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc said its female employees earned 37pc less than men and Lloyds Banking Group Plc said its pay gap was 33pc.

— Bloomberg/Washington Post Service

Published in Dawn, February 25th, 2018