“My parents didn’t present this idea to me that because I was disabled, I wouldn’t achieve anything,” says the graduate of the London School of Economics and Political Science. 

“I never really believed that anything wasn’t possible,” he adds. 

But as one of the estimated 16.1 million people in the UK who have a disability, life isn’t easy for the PwC director, who began his City career at Rothschild before stints at Barclays, KPMG and Capco.

“I definitely think in my junior days, the battle to be recognised was harder. I was often seen as — even if I wasn’t actually — the most junior person in the room,” he says. “I face prejudice every day as every disabled person in the UK does. So many events still restrict the number of wheelchair accessible seats and so many hotels still don’t have accessible bathrooms.” 

Under the Equality Act 2010, someone is classed as disabled if they have a physical or mental impairment, such as autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), that has a ‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’ negative effect on their daily life.

The City has one of the worst track records for employing disabled people. 

The government has cited the financial and insurance sectors as industries where disabled workers were ‘most likely’ to be under-represented compared to non-disabled workers.

Making the finance sector more accessible to disabled people is a complex problem, with factors including barriers to promotion, lack of role models, prejudiced attitudes and accessibility obstructing firms’ efforts at disability inclusion. 

Lawyers argue that the lack of accurate data prevents finance firms from taking action that could move the dial on disability inclusion. Meanwhile, diversity experts say potential steps such as mandatory disability pay-gap reporting could have “unintended consequences”, such as firms rejecting disabled employees’ request to reduce hours over fears it would widen their pay gap.

Financial News spoke to senior disabled executives in finance who outlined the challenges they have faced in their careers in a sector synonymous with brutal hours and cut-throat competition. 

‘It typically takes me two hours to get ready for work’

In 2019, Steve Ingham, who was chief executive of global recruitment giant PageGroup at the time, fell off a narrow bridge while skiing alone in the Alps.

“I nearly died. I was alone in a river, badly injured, with no one else realising I was there,” says Ingham.

The 6ft 4in tall former rugby player began throwing things to try to attract attention but it was hours before he was rescued. 

“When I was found I was severely hypothermic… I had multiple broken ribs, my lungs were punctured and had a litre and a half of blood in them, and of course I was paralysed with a broken spinal cord,” he recalls. The accident left Ingham paralysed from just below his belly button, making him a permanent wheelchair user. 

As the CEO of a FTSE 250 firm with nearly 10,000 employees in 37 countries, Ingham began working from his hospital bed.

“I had videoed myself after four weeks in hospital and posted it on our internal social media, explaining what had happened to me, my injuries, the impact it has on me and my family, and what my goals were,” he says. 

“I cried. They all knew me as I was, always highly visible and I’d been at Page so long,” he adds. 

Only 17% of disabilities are present from birth, while 83% are acquired over the course of people’s lives, according to the Business Disability Forum, which works with 580 companies employing nearly 20% of the UK workforce and an estimated eight million people worldwide. 

When Ingham went back to work full-time, he moved closer to the office in central London. At the time, he was the only CEO of a FTSE-250 company who declared a disability.

I cried. They all knew me as I was, always highly visible and I’d been at Page so long –

“The offices were completely accessible for my needs so nothing there changed. It typically takes me two hours to get ready for work so I tried to avoid early meetings,” he says. 

“Outside the office, my executive assistant had to ensure accessibility. Naturally, I had to go to investor meetings so every location had to be checked and questions asked: ‘Are there steps? Is there an accessible toilet?’”

Ingham retired at the end of 2022 to become a full-time diversity and inclusion champion. He joined five boards and chairs the Business Disability Forum. He’s also a trustee of the British Paralympic Association.

The ex-recruitment boss thinks the finance sector needs to challenge prejudices and work towards an environment in which inclusivity is a “given and not an option”.

“The qualities that many people with a disability have developed means many have additional qualities that employers need and look for. In addition, many of the customers of many employers are disabled.

“Yet, too many disabled people still find work inaccessible and that makes no sense,” he adds.

“It needs to be a team sport,” says Oliver Holbourn, CEO of RBS International, who has two neurodiverse children and has suffered a back condition since his mid-20s. “I think it is important for us to plough our own furrow, but it’s a team sport in terms of making sure that as an industry we are accessible. It’s about role modelling, education and embedding things in your processes for your leaders to make sure that they’re checking with their teams.” 

 ‘Bubble wrapping’ disabled employees

Nearly three out of four (74%) Britons with a disability employed in the finance sector say employers are not doing enough to integrate people with disabilities into work life, a 2020 poll by YouGov found. That fell to just half (52%) for those workers without a disability. 

The accountancy sector has the biggest gap between disabled (76%) and non-disabled (49%) workers in terms of who thinks employers aren’t doing enough to fully integrate people with disabilities.  

Forging a successful career even when employers have made adjustments to the workplace is hard — 56% of disabled employees said there are still disability‑related barriers in the workplace after adjustments have been made, according to the BDF.

“There’s not a one-size-fits-all solution here,” says Diane Lightfoot, chief exec of the BDF, about the “fairly stubborn” disability employment gap. “Some people said that their organisation, with the best intentions, can be overprotective and not want to give them more responsibility when actually they really want it and they are up for it.”

Lightfoot says bosses need to be careful of unconscious biases when talking about roles and the responsibilities of jobs.

“One person said: ‘Some people bubble-wrap me, giving me less responsibility even though I’m able when in fact they unconsciously disable me,’” she says.  

Janus Henderson’s Sarah de Lagarde, who lost an arm and a leg when she was hit by two Tube trains in September 2022, also faced unconscious bias when she came back to work in February 2023.

“People aren’t necessarily ill-minded, but there’s a lot of assumptions that we make in general. Some people said: ‘Well, given what you’ve been through, you shouldn’t be coming back to work for at least three years,’ while some assumed that I must be sad all the time. People make these assumptions and naturally you just think there’s a lack of education there.”

De Lagarde received the world’s first AI‑powered robotic arm in September 2023 to replace her right arm and she received a prosthesis below her right knee. Following months of physical therapy, she now works four days a week, with two days in the office if she’s physically “able to”. 

Her acquired disability has “hindered” her career, she says, recalling her role of global head of communications at the firm from 2019 when she spent her days fielding journalist enquiries and leading crisis communications at the asset manager. 

“I welcomed the psychological safety I was given and I felt comfortable talking to my boss and HR, but I realised that there are certain things I won’t be able to do anymore and it was really painful. Giving up my team was the first thing I had to do,” she says tearing up.

“I loved the excitement. I loved nothing more than a good crisis and I enjoyed being the problem solver. I loved the job but I gave it up. I was so happy to see that the team did so well that my second in command got the job. It was painful, but it was great satisfaction.”

De Lagarde had a frank conversation with her employer after her accident to map out a job role that suited the needs of both the company and her new reality of needing time to recover from her life-changing accident and go to medical appointments. 

The Janus Henderson executive isn’t alone in feeling disabilities can affect career trajectories — a study by the Reward and Employee Benefits Association in 2023 found half (51%) of disabled workers in the UK thought their disability was a barrier to progressing in their career.

ADHD? ‘That’s what naughty boys jumping off tables have’

Some disabled people in the finance sector got life-changing help from their employers.. 

In 2013, Jonathan Scott-Lee was working on the electronic markets trading desk of BNP Paribas when he was offered free sessions with psychologists and psychiatrists as part of an expatriation package for his move from London to Singapore. 

“I go to this psychiatrist and at the end of that first session, she gives me some Ritalin [medication] and says: ‘Look, I think you’ve got ADHD,’ says Scott-Lee who is now HSBC’s head of operations in Malaysia

“I remember thinking: ‘That’s what naughty boys jumping off tables have. That’s not me,’” he adds.

He took the medication for a week and found it made a huge difference to the “clarity” in his mind and how he “processed” thoughts.

“I realised that my sense of what is normal was so different from most of the population’s. So that moment really helped me to start my journey of understanding about mental disability and ADHD, and it helped my relationships as well, such as my marriage and friendships,” he says.

The HSBC exec says he navigates the social challenges that being neurodiverse can bring by “calculating” how neurotypical people behave. 

“The reason why I can speak to you fairly normally is because I’ve learned to mimic the things that I need, such as looking at the bridge of your nose but making sure I don’t stare too much.” 

Scott-Lee was diagnosed as autistic in 2020 and decided to tell his bosses at HSBC. That makes him something of an exception, however, since a 2023 Diversity Project survey of neurodiverse finance workers found that only 57% had disclosed their status to their employer.

The 43-year-old felt that he was in a senior position at the bank and could use his experience to end the stigma around neurodiversity in the finance sector.

“I realised early on that the very people who are good at technology are neurodiverse people — often autistic individuals who are so obsessed with technology and code that they will do it to an extreme. I put together a business proposal to target this pool of talent to attract and nurture them to protect the bank,” he says.

Scott-Lee says his career is proof that neurodiverse people can thrive in senior roles in the finance sector, adding: “I’ve tried to do my job the best that I can to move up the career ladder. At no point have I used my disabilities as an excuse to get ahead or to get special treatment.”

Being neurodiverse had a role to play in how  the HSBC banker dealt with losing his 16-year-old daughter Caitlyn, who died by suicide in April last year. His first reaction wasn’t breaking down but to figure out what to do next. 

“As someone who is autistic myself, it was the logical thing to do because I knew that these things had to be done,” he told FN in May. “If my daughter was indeed dead, there was nothing that I could do at that point in time, so there’s no use in me being emotional about it.”

Mind the disability pay gap 

In his King’s Speech in July, King Charles III announced that companies with at least 250 employees would have to report ethnicity and disability pay gaps. It is expected that the government will announce later this year more details of how this will be implemented.

In 2021, the disability pay gap in the UK — the gap between median pay for disabled employees and non‑disabled employees — was 13.8%, according to the latest estimates from the Office for National Statistics.

Tessa Cranfield, who heads up King & Spalding’s employment practice in London, agrees there were concerns about how disability pay-gap reporting would “work in practice”.

“There would need to be a prior consultation. So we have questions around what form this may take, and when it might be introduced,” she says.

The lack of accurate data has impeded finance firms’ ability to take a clear path to disability inclusion, according to Suzanne Horne, partner and head of the international employment practice at Paul Hastings.

“It is clear that a lot of work has been done over the last few years to make finance more inclusive, and to educate line managers on how to deal with these issues,” she says.

“However, it is difficult for firms to get accurate data to measure the impact of initiatives and programmes as employees do not always want to declare their status, and there are data privacy restrictions around what constitutes special category data for the purposes of the applicable law,” Horne adds. 

“Therefore, the jury is out as to whether we can say that this has resulted in equal opportunities.”

Role models and representation

While legislation is a minefield, the sector’s determined disabled executives are trying to be role models to inspire others like them to consider joining the finance sector.

This August, Janus Henderson’s De Lagarde became the first woman with double prosthetics to reach the top of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Despite “exhaustive preparation”, which included practice hikes around the UK on the Jurassic Coast, Scafell Pike and Ben Nevis, the Kilimanjaro climb tested her in ways she “could never have imagined”.

“There were moments when the phantom limb pain became so intense that I doubted my ability to continue [but] my successful ascent stands as a testament to what can be achieved with determination, the right preparation and the support of those who believe in us,” she says. 

“It’s a reminder that even the most daunting challenges can be overcome, one step at a time,” she adds.

PwC’s Taylor said a concrete first step could be improving the visibility of disabled people in the workplace. 

“There are people with a disability that are literally hidden from our society and are not seen out on the street having coffee or going out shopping with their families,” he says 

“When we have a more representative population of people in employment, in financial services and broader, then I believe that we would have cracked something.”

But Taylor thinks the finance sector has a long road ahead on inclusion if history is anything to go by.

“Margaret Thatcher became prime minister in 1979 and we’re still talking about gender equality more than 45 years later,” he adds.

Write to Shruti Tripathi Chopra at shruti.chopra@dowjones.com

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