A new strategy
ICAEW is future-focused and has developed a new strategy, Direction 2030, underpinned by our People and Culture priorities. Through this strategy, we are reaffirming our commitment to being a diverse and inclusive organisation, recognising that greater diversity enables stronger accountability and better decision-making.
2025 was a transition year for ICAEW as we embedded this approach across the organisation. During the year we made significant progress, including the external recruitment of three female C-Suite Officers, strengthening female representation at the most senior levels.
In 2017, ICAEW became a signatory to the HM Treasury Women in Finance Charter and committed to 40% of our senior management (“heads of” and above) being women by 2020. We exceeded this target in 2019 and, in 2025, women hold 57.1% of our senior roles. This is compared to 33.3% when we started our journey in 2017.
While our pay and bonus gender gaps have increased between 2024 and 2025, we believe we understand the underlying drivers and have clear actions in place to address them.
We continue to strengthen our diversity and inclusion practices and were recognised by Onvero with a Silver Award for our commitment towards continuous improvement in these areas.
How are we addressing the gap?
As part of our strategy for 2030, we are reviewing and strengthening our approach across four key areas:
Recruitment practices at the middle to senior management end: while we use gender neutral language in job descriptions, anonymised CV screening and gender-balanced interview panels, we recognise that fewer women are currently applying for, and being appointed into, middle to senior management roles. We will review our attraction strategies and the practices of external recruitment agencies.
Contractor recruitment practices: we are reviewing our decision-making processes around contractor engagement, where we have seen a recent shift towards more male contractors being appointed at higher rates than females.
Reward and recognition framework: a full end-to-end review of our reward framework is underway to ensure our pay, bonus and benefit practices are transparent, inclusive and supported by strong governance and communication.
Flexible working opportunities: we will continue to promote and enhance flexible working opportunities, recognising their importance in supporting career progression and retention, particularly at senior levels.
Acknowledging ICAEW’s numerous past achievements it is time to re-energise the Institute as we move towards our 150th anniversary in 2030 and beyond. We will do this by reinforcing our position as the pre-eminent global membership body for chartered accountants. Our aim is to enable people everywhere to do business with confidence. Our updated strategy, Direction 2030, provides the framework within which we will deliver on this aim.