Customer diversity and inclusion

Our approach

Investing in businesses that reflect the diversity in the communities we serve helps make our society more equal, inclusive and cohesive. Investing in improvements to where people work and live promotes health and wellbeing. One of our strategic objectives up to 2027 is to support financial inclusion for underrepresented groups and create positive impact in the Welsh economy.

We work closely with businesses and stakeholders in Wales through smart collaborations to ensure our funding supports financial inclusion across sectors and demographics. In support of this we are enhancing our equality and diversity inclusion plan with a particular focus this year on Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities - previous focus has included women entrepreneurs and young entrepreneurs.

As well as businesses and business owners, our diverse customer base also extends to households through investment service schemes including Self Build Wales, Help to Buy - Wales and Help to Stay mortgage support. With the latter particularly, our team offer expert and enhanced levels of vulnerable customer case management recognising the difficult customer circumstances.

Data disclosure

Gender based on responses about 1,654 individual owners/directors/shareholders which provided this demographic data.

Ethnicity based on responses about 899 individual owners/directors/shareholders which provided this demographic data.

Age based on responses about 1692 individual owners/directors/shareholders which provided this demographic data.

In 2023/24, 29 individual owners/directors/shareholders reported having a disability. The Social Model of Disability recognises that disabled people are people with impairments who are disabled by barriers (attitudinal, environmental and organisational) which prevent them from participating fully in all areas of life. ‘Disability’ is a social impairment; and the Social Model of Disability requires society to remove the barriers in order that all people have equality.

All percentages may not equal 100 due to rounding.

Source: Impact of Investment forms 1 April 2023 – 31 March 2024

Our initiatives

We commissioned an Equality Impact Assessment ahead of the launch of the Development Bank in October 2017, and commissioned a further report just after the 5-year anniversary of the Development Bank in early 2023. Both Equality Impact Assessments were undertaken by external consultants and made a series of recommendations on improving equality, diversity and inclusion.

We have adopted a phased and targeted approach to implementing the recommendations, seeking to identify and address barriers for specific under-represented groups. To date, we have focused on, and implemented specific actions to support, women entrepreneurs, young entrepreneurs, and we’re currently focused on how we can better support Minority Ethnic entrepreneurs.

Women entrepreneurs

Investing in Women Code

In August 2021, we became signatories to Investing in Women Code.

The Investing in Women Code is a commitment to support the advancement of female entrepreneurship in the UK by improving female entrepreneurs’ access to tools, resources and finance from the financial services sector.

The Development Bank of Wales, as a signatory, shares a commitment to work in partnership to make the UK one of the most attractive countries in the world to start and grow a business by advancing female entrepreneurship.

The Investing in Women Code is designed for all organisations that finance entrepreneurs. The Code commits organisations to promoting female entrepreneurship by:

Commitment	How we’re addressing it
Having a nominated member of the senior leadership team who is responsible for supporting equality in access to finance.	Our lead is Rhian Elston, Wales Investment Director.
Increasing the transparency of financial services firms’ data concerning support for female entrepreneurs.	We are increasing transparency by including the data in our annual report and accounts, and on this page.
Providing data to the Department for Business and Trade nominated industry body to be published annually on an aggregated and anonymised basis.	We have been doing this since 2022.
Adopting internal practices to improve the outlook for female entrepreneurs.	This page details some of the ways in which we are improving the outlook for women entrepreneurs.

Invest in Women Hub

The Development Bank of Wales and Angels Invest Wales are both listed on the Invest in Women Hub.

Women Angels of Wales

The Development Bank of Wales and Angels Invest Wales facilitated the establishment of Women Angels of Wales:

Women angels unite to invest in women in Wales

Female entrepreneurs in Wales launch women-led angel investment syndicate

Growing the business angel community with more female investors

Young entrepreneurs

We developed resources to support young entrepreneurs, and our case studies can be filtered to show our investments into young entrepreneurs:

Partnerships

In addition to our focus to date on women entrepreneurs and young entrepreneurs, we have sought to identify other opportunities to partner with organisations, events and awards that showcase our commitment to equality and diversity.

The Development Bank was one of the corporate supporters of PRIDE Cymru in June 2024.

The Development Bank is the inaugural and main sponsor of the Llais Cymru’s Welsh Women in Business Awards, or the #LlaisAwards as it’s known, which celebrates women’s important contribution to the business world in Wales. Llais Cymru’s Awards is a unique, national and bilingual celebration of women in businesses of all types and all sizes.

The Development Bank was the sponsor of the Business/Entrepreneur Award at Chwarae Teg’s Womenspire Awards in 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021.

Our equality commitments

Our corporate plan for the period 2022-27 outlines our key areas of equality focus:

Broad theme	Specific activity	Progress and next area of focus
Diversity monitoring systems and processes	Review the diversity monitoring form as part of the project of work to consider how environmental, social and governance considerations are further embedded into our processes.	The diversity monitoring form has been reviewed and updated. Continue to review the diversity monitoring form on a regular basis as part of our customer journey project.
Brand and communication	Ensure equality and diversity is part of the 2022 branding refresh work and embedded in our communications.	Brand refresh work completed and implemented.
Brand and communication	Review our document accessibility and update our accessibility statement.	Ongoing.
Customers	Through direct engagement, identify additional support required by underrepresented groups.	See earlier initiatives section which outlines the specific work we’ve undertaken to better support women and young entrepreneurs. Our current focus area is how we can better support Minority Ethnic entrepreneurs.
	Promote the entrepreneurial culture through engagement with programmes focused on young people.	See earlier initiatives section.
	Continue to work with networks and partners to reach underrepresented groups.	Ongoing.