Forbes Names City National Bank One of America’s Best Employers For Women

City National makes the list for a second year in a row and ranks in the top 15 financial companies.

LOS ANGELES — City National Bank announced today it has made the annual Forbes list of “Best Employers For Women” for the second year in a row. The company now ranks as the No. 14 financial and banking institution for women to work for, moving up three spots from last year.

This recognition of the companies that are best supporting their female colleagues comes at a time when the percentage of women working for pay is the lowest it has been since 1986. Since the beginning of the pandemic, more than two million women have left the workforce.

“At City National, we’ve worked hard to retain our female colleagues, and the numbers bear it out. Currently, about half of our total colleagues are female, and we’ve actually grown our female colleague base by nearly 2% since the pandemic began, counter to the nationwide trend,” said Kelly Coffey, CEO of City National Bank. “This recognition from Forbes underscores our commitment to fostering a culture of inclusivity and to closing the gender gap. At a time when millions of women have seen their careers disrupted during the pandemic, it is more critical than ever that we — as a bank and as a society — double down on our support for working women.”

The Forbes list was compiled by surveying 50,000 individuals nationwide, including 30,000 women, working for businesses with at least 1,000 employees. Representation at the executive and board levels were factors, as well as initiatives to improve gender equity.

City National’s commitment to gender equity is strong and ongoing. Starting at the top, nearly half of the company’s senior leadership team, including its CEO, is composed of women and people of color. The bank maintains an active Colleague Resource Group for women, which is dedicated to engaging, empowering and enabling the success of female colleagues by creating programming and events that support women in the workplace. When Coffey became CEO in 2019, she immediately took important steps to improve the environment for women, including implementing improvements to the bank’s maternity leave policy.

In the community, City National works with a wide range of charitable organizations that support women. Recently, it worked with Baby2Baby, a Los Angeles-based organization that provides essential items to underserved mothers and their infant children across the country. The bank also supports Array Alliance, an organization that represents the diverse and often underrepresented voices of women in film.

“Today is Women’s Equality Day, which commemorates the addition of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920, granting women the right to vote,” said Coffey. “We’ve come a long way in the 101 years since that time, but we have more work to do. At City National, we are committed to empowering and enabling the success of women — and all of our colleagues.”

The bank rose 21 spots from last year in the overall Forbes list and was ranked No. 193 among a total of 300 companies.