The WiF Charter applies to its Founders and is open to all regulated financial services firms operating in Luxembourg, including but not limited to credit institutions, investment funds, insurance companies, management companies, investment firms, and Professionals of the Financial or the Insurance Sector (PSF or PSA).

To become a signatory the organisation has to fill out this form and submit the application to the LSFI team: womeninfinancecharter@lsfi.lu

Submission of the form indicates CEO/Senior Luxembourg Representative approval from the joining party for signing up to the Charter. Within a couple of weeks, the LSFI team will provide the organisation with all the necessary information and guidelines.

Any organisation that requires assistance can contact the LSFI at the following email address: womeninfinancecharter@lsfi.lu

For 2024, WiF Charter signatories will receive a data collection request on 15th October 2024 in which they will be asked to fill the Charter signatory questionnaire. They will have until 15th November to return the completed questionnaire.

Signatory organisations will have the option to choose their yearly metrics date, which refers to the firm’s situation of the year, between 1st January 2024 and 30th September 2024. For example, if you choose the 25th of June of this year as your metric date, in the data collection campaign, you should provide the situation in your firm (i.e. count of employees at different seniority levels) on that date.

As per the Charter commitments, signatories should set a headline numerical target (e.g. 30%) for female representation at different seniority levels for a defined year. This must include a target year and possibly a timeframe (1-3-5 years) with optional ad interim target(s) to reach the final target that has been set.

No, each signatory is free to choose its own targets. If you were already a signatory, you can either provide the target set last year or update it, if there have been any changes.

At least one of the following Targets is mandatory: Board level, Executive Committee / C-suite and at Senior Management level.

The following Targets are optional (not mandatory): Headline targets for middle/junior management and interim targets at all levels are optional.

Please note targets can be conservative, as you can also work on maintaining your current situation.

The endorsement doesn’t have an expiration date and signatories set their own target and timeframe by which they intend to achieve the target in question. However, signatories are asked to report annually on the metrics and progress made towards achieving objectives and targets.  Therefore if a signatory organisation fails to report once, it will lose its signatory status and will be removed from the Charter’s list.

An organisation can become a signatory at anytime during the year.

New Charter signatories that join before 30th September of each year are included in that year’s data collection and report.

Signatories joining between 1st October and the annual report publication date will be included in the new joiners list of the Charter’s annual report, however, they will start reporting the following year.

To facilitate the reporting process, the WiF Charter’s founders have designated the Luxembourg Sustainable Finance Initiative (LSFI) as external coordinating entity and data partner. The LSFI will also oversee coordination with the Steering Committee composed of the Charter’s founding members (ABBL, ACA, ALFI,  LuxCMA, LuxFLAG and LuxSE) and will take charge of directing and managing the reporting process. This streamlined approach guarantees a unified and centralized method for all signatory organisations.

The LSFI discloses on yearly basis a WiF progress report by the end of Q1 with the data referring to the previous year. The report is available on the LSFI webpage here.

As stated in the Pillars and in the WiF Charter Guidelines, signatory organisations must support transparency by publicly and annually reporting their progress against the set targets. It will be considered good practice for signatories to include a Women in Finance section in their Annual Report. The LSFI will publish an aggregated and anonymised annual report covering signatories’ progress against the targets they set forth. The report is available on the LSFI webpage here.

There are no specific criteria that define what should fall under, for example, C-level executives versus Senior Managerial roles. Organisations can use seven different seniority levels (board; executive committee; senior management; middle and junior management; and other staff) and categorize according to what fits best. It is key to avoid double counting.

While these levels may not map directly onto organisations’ in-house hierarchical nomenclature, they provide a means of comparison across all signatories.

Relative to the definition of “senior management”, employees in middle management and junior management roles were identified as one level below or two levels below senior management level, respectively.

Relative to the definition of “Other”, were defined as employees with non-managerial responsibilities.

Board members based abroad should be accounted for and the targets should also reflect that.

When it comes to the employee count, this must be on the workforce working for the Luxembourg-based branch office irrespective of the residency of the employee.

Groups may choose to consolidate their subsidiaries in their target setting as long as those subsidiaries are located in Luxembourg.

Although with distinct targets and actions, both Charters share the goal of enhancing and embracing increased diversity and inclusion within organizations, at all levels. While the Diversity Charter Lëtzebuerg has a broader scope covering the EU non-discrimination criteria and beyond, across multiple sectors, the WiF Charter takes a focused approach, concentrating its efforts on achieving gender parity in Luxembourg’s financial sector.
For this reason, they are complementary.