Thursday 19 January 2017 8:20 am

Lloyds Banking Group takes the top spot on Stonewall’s top 100 LGBT employers as banking and legal dominate the list

Lloyds Banking Group has taken the top spot of Stonewall's top 100 LGBT employers list.

Banking and legal dominated the list of the charity's most inclusive employers.

Lloyds, which came second to MI5 last year, launched a new colleague volunteering programme and formed official partnership with lesbian, gay, bi and trans (LGBT) charities.

Law firm Pinsent Masons took the second spot (up from fifth last year), while JP Morgan shot up the list from 41st place in 2016 to third for 2017.

The top ranked law and finance firms (Source: Stonewall)

The list is compiled from submissions to the Workplace Equality Index, a benchmarking tool used by employers to gauge their progress when it comes to LGBT equality in the workplace.

Stonewall's chief executive Ruth Hunt called Lloyds "a trailblazer" for LGBT equality.

António Horta Osório, group chief executive, Lloyds Banking Group, said: "We are honoured to be recognised by Stonewall as the leading employer for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Lloyds Banking Group is committed to supporting diversity in its workforce so that we can harness all of the qualities and talents of our colleagues to achieve our aim of helping Britain prosper."

Eight organisations were deemed to have gone above and beyond in demonstrating their commitment to LGBT inclusion at work are Accenture, Barclays, EY, Gentoo, Goldman Sachs, Home Office, Simmons & Simmons and Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.

There were no media companies in the top 100 though, nor firms from travel or construction, while Stonewall said retail, leisure and arts were all underrepresented.

And in an anonymous survey of more than 92,000 staff from the 439 organisations that took part in the Index, one in eight said they didn't feel comfortable disclosing their sexual orientation to any managers or senior colleagues.

One in five trans employees wouldn't feel comfortable disclosing their gender identity to any colleagues and 43 per cent wouldn't feel happy disclosing their gender identity to any customers or clients.