Coutts’s announcement of its 2025 two-year Wealth Graduate programme cohort, which includes eight men and one woman, has renewed debate about gender representation and pay disparities in the finance sector.
The private bank and wealth management firm, known for serving the royal family, posted on LinkedIn on 28 October that it was ‘excited to welcome our 2025 Wealth Graduates,’ sharing a photo and the names of the nine-person cohort, which included only one woman.
At the time of writing, the post has drawn 44 comments (far more than is typical for the firm’s page) with many highly liked responses criticising the gender gap. Among them, former Coutts wealth manager and director Michelle Coulson, now an executive director at Brown Shipley, commented ‘only one woman?’, a remark that received more than 260 likes, along with replies from finance professionals writing comments such as: ‘The financial industry still feels like a boys’ club. I’m sure many qualified women applied, yet this so-called ‘inclusive’ company managed to include just one. I’m thinking about the salary gap..well…It’s almost laughable.’
[See also: Women-powered businesses achieve record exits but barriers remain]
Related
Jules Nelson, senior vice president of Citi Group’s EMEA residential real estate underwriting team, along with other women working in the finance sector, also agreed with Coulson’s comment adding their own reactions.
The Wealth Graduate Programme at Coutts is a two-year scheme providing trainees with experience across teams that support relationship managers for HNW clients.
David Caldeira, a male senior anti-money laundering analyst at Coutts (according to his LinkedIn profile), also joined the comment thread, writing: ‘perhaps this year men were better candidates? Or shall we disregard potential to please a gender ratio? Is that it?’
Content from our partners
NatWest Group, the parent company of Coutts, told Spear’s: ‘We believe diversity and inclusion are key to delivering insightful decisions and lasting client trust. We are committed to diverse representation within our graduate scheme and are continually exploring how to encourage a broad range of graduate applications from across the UK and beyond. Our Graduate programmes at NatWest typically have a 50/50 gender split, but this may not always be the case in some of our smaller sub programmes.’
This discussion reflects wider concerns about gender representation and pay inequality in the finance sector: while the UK financial services workforce is 53 per cent male and 47 per cent female, women hold only a third of senior roles, and the sector has the largest median gender pay gap in the country, according to Women in Banking & Finance (WIBF), an organisation that promotes diversity and gender equality in UK financial services.
Figures published in September by employment law firm Fox & Partners show that women hold fewer than one in five senior positions in UK financial services, with about 12,400 of the sector’s roughly 66,800 top roles occupied by women. The study also found that women account for only 9 per cent of CEO posts, a level that has seen little improvement year on year and remains well below representation targets.
NatWest Group is a signatory of the Women in Finance Charter, launched in 2016 by HM Treasury to encourage gender balance across the financial sector. However, a report released in April 2025 by the UK finance ministry found that progress has been slow: women held 36 per cent of senior roles last year, a slight increase from 35 per cent in 2023 and 34 per cent in 2022.
[See also: Why more women are scooping top jobs at Britain’s most prestigious wealth managers]
This is not the first time Coutts is under scrutiny over sexism allegations. In 2018, banker Harry Keogh was accused of making lewd comments, excessive drinking, and unwanted physical contact; the bank said it carried out an investigation and ‘decisive disciplinary action was taken.’ Keogh received a final written warning but resigned later that year. He later attempted to launch a business venture with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (formerly Prince Andrew), which was ultimately abandoned after officials deemed it ‘not appropriate’ for a member of the Royal Family.
In 2019, a tribunal rejected a £400,000 sexism claim by financier Donna Ball, who alleged she was underpaid and repeatedly blocked from promotion at Coutts by sexist male managers, describing the bank as an ‘exclusive gentlemen’s club,’ but the panel ruled she had overestimated her performance.
Coutts is just emerging from controversy after NatWest and Nigel Farage settled a dispute in March over the closure of his account. The account had been closed nearly two years earlier, prompting a public row; the bank later admitted ‘serious failings’ in its handling of the case, which contributed to the resignation of NatWest’s chief executive Dame Alison Rose, who was replaced by current CEO Paul Thwaite.
