ABGSC Women in Finance Foundation announces renewed support for “Kvinner i Finans Charter”

Above: Assorted KIFC highlights from the past several years, including, clockwise from top left: Alexandra Morris of SKAGEN Fondene, Lotte Grepp Knutsen, former State Secretary of the Norwegian Ministry of Finance, Governor of Norges Bank Ida Wolden Bache and Turid Solvang of KIFC during the presentation of KIFC’s first status report in September 2022; Knut Brundtland of ABGSC participating in a 2019 Futureboards Cross-Border Dialogue meeting in London, in the lead up to KIFC’s creation; and a joint workshop hosted by KIFC and ABGSC during the 2022 SHE Conference, which was attended by ABGSC CEO Jonas Ström (front left), Marianne Daae of the Foundation (back, fourth from right) and Eirin Mårvik of ABGSC (back, second from left) in addition to a number of leaders within the financial sector.

In advance of the upcoming three-year anniversary of its support for Kvinner i Finans Charter (“Women in Finance Charter”, or “KIFC”), the ABGSC Women in Finance Foundation has renewed its support for the initiative.
KIFC is a Norwegian initiative that commits signatories of its charter to a series of measures designed to help increase the share of women in leadership roles in the finance industry. The Foundation is proud to have been one of the 11 founding partners who have lent their financial support to KIFC since it launched in early 2021.
Since KIFC’s establishment, it has experienced a steady increase in activity and in the number of signatories to its charter; to date, a total of 65 companies from across Norway have committed to the charter’s four principles.
Having initially committed to a three-year period of support, the Foundation has now renewed its support for another three year term. To-date, KIFC has focused on outreach to companies in the Norwegian financial industry and increasing its number of signatories. Going forward, the initiative will continue facilitating best practice sharing among the signatories as they work towards establishing internal gender targets..
The Foundation’s Marianne Daae commented that: “KIFC has achieved strong results during its first three years in operation and we are incredibly proud to have supported its growth. Of course, the gender balance in management and specialist roles in the finance industry still has much room for improvement. We believe that KIFC will continue to play an important role in helping to close the gap in these areas, and we are therefore pleased to announce our renewed support for the initiative. We believe that KIFC can achieve even more progress in the upcoming years”.
Cofounder and CEO, Turid Solvang, commented that: “The support from the ABG Sundal Collier Women in Finance Foundation and the other founding partners from the early stages of planning and launching the initiative, and through the last three years of operation, has been greatly appreciated in helping to facilitate the engagement we experience today. The last three years have been a fantastic journey, and I am very much looking forward to continuing to work with the important challenges we are facing when it comes to gender imbalance in the finance industry. Based on feedback from our partners and signatories, we learned that 90 per cent would like to recommend joining “Kvinner i Finans Charter” to other organisations – which is encouraging for future growth of the Charter. Going forward, we will equally focus on best practice sharing and higher involvement in the public debate on the gender issues we see in the financial sector”.

Above: KIFC presented their first status report in September 2022 during an event at Norges Bank. Pictured is Governor of Norges Bank Ida Wolden Bache, who presented during the event, and ABGSC’s then-Norway CEO, Peter Straume, who also delivered an address. 

About “Kvinner i Finans Charter”
“Kvinner i Finans Charter” is a Norwegian initiative which mirrors the UK “Women in Finance Charter” that HM Treasury launched in 2016. The initiative was launched in Norway in 2021 and aims to increase the proportion of women in leadership and specialist positions in the finance industry, by encouraging companies to sign-on to its Charter. The charter commits signatories to the following measures:
1. Appointing a member of the executive committee to have dedicated responsibility for gender balance and inclusion
2. Setting internal targets for gender balance in leadership and senior positions
3. Having an ambition to reflect the achievement of targets in leadership remuneration
4. Publishing the status of and progress towards targets on companies’ own websites

Above: Assorted KIFC industry events over the past three years. Pictured are (from left): a Sparebank 1 Nord-Norge event in Tromsø (Astrid Skaugseth of SHE in front right foreground); a Sparebank 1 SMN event (pictured, from left, are Stian Gårdsvoll of PwC, Letizia Jaccheri of NTNU, Therese Høyer Grimstad of Finans Norge and the KIFC Board, Astrid Undheim of SpareBank 1 SMN, Ellen Reitan, State Secretary of the Norwegian Ministry of Finance, and Turid Solvang of KIFC); and a Nordea event in Bergen (pictured, from left: Anri Håvard Hebib of Corvus Energy, Anders Skjævestad of DNB Livsforsikring, Nina Remøy Wiik of Nordea, and Benedicte Schilbred Fasmer of SpareBank 1 SR-Bank).