Pay Equity at Citi

Last week, Citi issued the following memo to its employees.

Pay equity is a very important principle at Citi. We have long had a number of efforts in place to help us adhere to that principle, including continuously evaluating market conditions to help inform pay and conducting a rigorous review of pay recommendations across the company as part of our annual compensation process each year.

This year, we expanded on those efforts to assess pay at Citi when comparing women to men, and US minorities to non-minorities. As a starting point, this analysis was conducted in the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany, and we accounted for a number of factors in our analysis to make the comparisons meaningful, including job function, level and geography. We found that women are paid on average 99% of what men are paid and minorities are paid on average 99% of what non-minorities are paid.

As part of this year's compensation cycle, we are making appropriate increases to help close the gaps for both women and US minorities. We will also adjust compensation for other individuals where the analysis determined increases were warranted. We are committed to continuing to review compensation for pay equity and will continue this analysis in all other countries where we have employees.

Pay equity is an issue that is rightly receiving a great deal of attention and scrutiny. Data and research consistently point to a pay gap among men and women, and minorities and non-minorities employees, across industries. At Citi, our continuing focus on pay equity furthers our goal of being the employer of choice for employees of diverse backgrounds, and it supports our efforts to attract and retain the best talent and reward performance consistent with our Leadership Standards. These are clear business imperatives for Citi, and we remain firmly committed to them.