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Inspiring Women - Laura Wallis  Head of Overseas Banks Division, Prudential Regulation Authority

Inspiring Women - Laura Wallis Head of Overseas Banks Division, Prudential Regulation Authority

Mark.Freed / 28 Jun 2018

E2W is speaking to women who have been working in financial services over the decades to celebrate the 100 year anniversary of women securing the vote. This month Laura Wallis shares her inspiring story. 

 Laura Wallis  Head of Overseas Banks Division | International Banks Supervision | Prudential Regulation Authority

I didn’t think I’d be a ‘career regulator’ when I was reading economics at the University of Warwick.  I thought I’d go into something more economics based but then I secured a place on the old FSA’s internship programme and everything changed.  I loved it – I loved the people and I loved that despite it being an internship I was given a ‘proper’ job with responsibility.  

I then went onto the FSA Graduate Programme – it was a three and a half year programme made up of annual rotations and a six month secondment.  I spent my last secondment in the macro-economics team and knew that I wanted to continue working for the FSA.  The socio-political environment has a big impact on the economy and financial services: as the world changes, regulators have to adapt too and this combined with new roles every eighteen months to two years meant that I continued to learn and develop my knowledge and experience.   Regulators are perceived as sticklers for the rules and boring but it was far from that.

The Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) was a successor of the FSA and came into force in 2013.  It is part of the Bank of England and works in conjunction with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).  As the FSA morphed into the PRA and FCA, I moved with it as part of the PRA and so into the Bank of England.  My career in regulation continued. 

Over my career I’ve worked in a variety of teams: within the Treasury I investigated the potential impact of pandemic ‘flu’; in the macro-economic team I was involved in the financial crisis, creating daily reporting and stress testing; and within the Authorisations Division I was part of the team that created the Senior Manager’s Regime.  More recently I have been managing the Overseas Bank division which has brought me into contact with Brexit.  As you can see, my career has been really diverse!

During my career I’ve had maternity breaks for my two children.  Only on my return after each child have I felt as though being a woman, and more importantly an ambitious working mum, has meant that people have regarded me differently; not necessarily explicitly but certainly unconscious biases have been clear.  There was surprise when I returned from maternity leave in less than a year and even greater surprise when I was promoted to head of division, part of the senior management team when I came back to work after my second child.  I took the role on a part-time basis.

I decided to be very open about working part-time – I let the division know when I was available and made it clear that I wouldn’t be checking my emails on my days off – if they needed to call me, they’d need to phone my personal mobile.  My team accepted this arrangement and it worked well.  And now my children are at school and I’m working full time, I make sure I leave the office loudly when I go to collect them.  For other members of staff wanting flexible working arrangements, there’s still the challenge of people’s perceptions, “How will it work?” 

“Women in the Bank” is the Bank of England’s women’s network and I became more involved after I had noticed the slight stigma of returning to work post-children and wanting to continue on an upward career trajectory.  The network hosts a variety of events aimed at helping parents (both fathers and mothers) negotiate maternity and paternity leave, especially women returners, and helping all women achieve their potential at work.  We have to understand more about why women leave the Bank and finance industry as a whole and I’m proud to say that in May we hosted an event with other central banks to examine this issue.  This isn’t just a British issue.

I still love what I do and even more so now that I can help other women reach their career goals.  I would like to continue to develop the culture across the sector to ensure there’s greater female representation throughout. 

 

Read other stories in the series

E2W can help you take a step back and revel in your achievements.  

This year, we’re celebrating the 100 year anniversary of women securing the right to vote by showcasing what women in financial services have achieved over this century in time.

Thanks to this series of articles, we’ve brought you stories of times gone by such as Sheila Buckingham’s and Betty Warde’s memories as well as more recent articles on women in finance today:  Suki Notay, Yvonne Kurankye and Anne Hargreaves to name a few.

Many of our Vote100 story tellers have found it a revelation to recount their careers, stand back and see what they have achieved – a narrative of their CV.  Thanks to the E2W platform and audience, these women’s peers, seniors, mentors and perhaps even future employers can read about how they have overcome challenges, chosen their career moves and in some cases, successfully managed career breaks. 

We would love to hear from you if you would like to tell your story or if someone you know would like to share theirs.  Or perhaps you would like to share with us how you contributed to something: it could be the establishment of a Women’s Network or how you contributed to a particular project – big or small, we want to help you share your success stories.

What achievements are you proud of?  Tell us what you’ve done!  In this very special year marking women’s progress, stand up and be counted - share your story with E2W and our supporters.  

Please contact Tina Freed to share your story – as a woman in financial services herself, Tina is always interested in hearing about others’ careers. 

 


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