The following message from Kevin Cox, Chief Human Resources Officer at American Express, was issued earlier today to all American Express employees in the United States.
As you know, gender pay equity has become an issue of interest globally, reflecting the ongoing conversation about women's equality in the workplace. In fact, over the last few years, companies across industries have been urged by shareholder groups and regulators in certain countries to provide more transparency in reporting gender pay statistics. In the U.S. for example, Arjuna Capital, an investment firm headquartered in Boston, has submitted shareholder proposals to a number of large financial institutions in which they hold shares, including American Express, asking for disclosures about the status of pay equity at their companies.
Here's where we stand: At American Express, we are committed to ensuring that our pay and reward structure is equitable and free of any bias. This is a key component of our overall commitment to creating a diverse and an inclusive workplace, which has been a consistent and critical focus for us for nearly three decades. To help meet these commitments, we regularly review our compensation practices to ensure they support pay equality and transparency, and we are proud of our record.
Based on the most recent comprehensive pay analysis we conducted with a third-party consulting firm, we are confident that our colleagues are compensated equitably, regardless of gender. The review found no evidence of bias in our compensation processes and indicated we were effectively at parity. Going forward, we will continue our reviews in partnership with an independent external consultant. If and when we discover gaps, we will take appropriate actions to correct them, and we will continue to disclose our overall results. We have shared this with Arjuna, and they have withdrawn their shareholder proposal.
In other countries, regulators have begun to mandate gender pay disclosures using different criteria regarding the companies they are including, as well as the methodology they are requiring for the analysis. As a result, we expect to make additional disclosures, where required.
As we work to implement all the elements of our Framework for Winning, diversity and inclusion remains a critical focus, and it is one of our greatest strengths. It is vital to our company's success that we recruit and retain the best talent and that our workforce is representative of the customers and communities we serve. We believe that, to deliver for our shareholders, we need to deliver for our customers. And to deliver for our customers, we need to deliver best-in-class support to our colleagues who serve them. As we move forward, we will continue to evolve and enhance our diversity and inclusion programs, and we will continue to hold our senior leaders accountable for ensuring the diversity of our workforce by including diversity goals in our business scorecards.
Making American Express a welcoming, purposeful and rewarding place to work is what being an inclusive culture is all about, and that is what we want for all our colleagues.
