Banking must report from 2024 on the salary difference between men and women: it is the third sector with the largest gap
Starting in 2024, banks must report to the Bank of Spain on the salary differences of their workers between men and women. This is dictated by a circular from the supervisor published this week in the Official State Gazette (BOE), which demands information on the gender pay gap in what is the third sector in Spain with the largest pay differences between men and women.. Although banking is one of the areas in which it pays the best, the differences are also evident at the territorial level: the average salary in Madrid is 34% higher than the Spanish average.
According to the new instructions from the Bank of Spain, credit institutions must report every three years on the gender pay gap in their workforce, a requirement that aims to adapt Spanish regulations to a 2013 European directive and the guidelines of the European Banking Authority (EBA), reviewed in June 2022. Specifically, the bank will have to provide data on the proportion of men and women employed and their distribution according to salary levels, as well as on the gender pay gap itself.
The request for information affects all credit institutions – that is, both banks and savings banks, credit cooperatives and even the Official Credit Institute (ICO) – except those that either have less than 50 workers or are subsidiaries of entities located in another Member State of the European Union. Each organization must send its information to the Bank of Spain individually, whether or not it is integrated into a group, and will have the deadline for the first sending until June 15, 2024, the deadline to communicate the data on the wage gap at the close of 2023.
The financial sector is one of those that pays the highest salaries in Spain, although it is also among those with the greatest remuneration differences between men and women.. According to the latest data from the General Treasury of Social Security, the average contribution base was 3,434 euros gross per month among workers in financial and insurance activities in June of this year, 6.5% more than in mid-2019. 2022. For both men and women, it is the second sector with the highest salaries, only behind activities related to the supply of electricity and gas, where the average contribution base reaches 3,313 euros.. Both amounts far exceed the average for all sectors (2,093 euros).
Specifically, the average gross salary among male bank employees amounts to 3,705 euros, while in the case of women it is 3,211 euros per month, according to June data. In this way, the difference between both genders is 494 euros, which represents the third largest sectoral gap, after those existing in the field of domestic activities – domestic workers, gardeners, doormen, janitors, etc. – and scientific activities. and technical, where the pay difference is around 800 and 500 euros respectively.
The distance between the average salary of men and women has grown by 8.8% in the last year in the financial and insurance sector, compared to June 2022, and exceeds the average gap of 323 euros per month that exists as a whole. of sectors. According to the latest Social Security affiliation data, there are nearly 320,000 people in Spain who work in finance, of which 175,700 are women and 143,900 are men.. Employees dedicated to banking and insurance barely represent 2% of a total of almost 16.4 million employed workers.
Millionaire salaries
The report on the wage gap requested by the Bank of Spain in the new circular adds to other information that credit institutions already had to report annually to the supervisor, relating to the general remuneration of all staff and salaries equal to or greater than one million. euros per year, for example. The institution headed by Pablo Hernández de Cos emphasizes in the circular published this Tuesday that all the information requested is aligned with the guidelines of the European Banking Authority (EBA), which, among other tasks, examines the remuneration practices of financial entities, especially to members with higher income levels.
According to data collected by the EBA, in 2021 there were 221 bankers in Spain with salaries of at least one million euros – compared to 128 in 2020 – who shared 478 million. The average millionaire salary among this wealthy minority was 2.16 million euros. In the year after the pandemic, the Iberian country was the fourth State in the European Union with the most million-dollar salaries in the financial sector, behind Germany (589), France (371) and Italy (351).. In fact, the highest paid banker in the entire eurozone in 2021 was Spanish and earned 14.67 million euros. In total, in the EU as a whole there were 1,957 bankers with millionaire salaries in 2021, with an average remuneration of 1.8 million euros.
Territorial gap
Leaving astronomical salaries aside, gender is not the only salary gap present in the financial sector. There is also a strong territorial bias. According to statistics on the labor market and pensions in tax sources released this week by the Tax Agency, the average salary of banking employees in Madrid rose to 60,800 euros per year in 2022, 34% above the 45,430 euros in the previous years. which is the Spanish average.
The remuneration of the financial sector in the rest of the communities is far from the amount recorded in the capital. Even in Catalonia, which is the second region where the most banking employees are concentrated after Madrid, the average salary is 44,723 euros, slightly below the national average.. At the opposite extreme to the autonomy chaired by Isabel Díaz Ayuso is Extremadura, where the average remuneration in the banking sector is 31,642 euros per year per person, almost half that of Madrid.