In person For the v Respondent — 2022

The claimant applied for a Quantitative Financial Analyst role within the respondent's Market Risk Analytics Quant group but was not successful. Her age discrimination case was pleaded as indirect discrimination under section 19 EqA 2010. She said the respondent had applied a PCP of designating the role as Band 5 with a requirement for less than 10 years' relevant professional experience, which she said disadvantaged applicants aged 40 or over and disadvantaged her in particular.

The tribunal heard from the claimant, the internal recruiter Ms Gail Danvers, the decision-maker Ms Laura Muller, and Mr Adrian Zuber. It accepted Ms Muller's evidence that she was looking for a candidate with specific market risk experience or, failing that, some indirect experience and understanding of market risk, because applicants with direct market risk experience were hard to attract. The tribunal found that the claimant, although she had over 10 years' professional experience and was 41 years old, could not demonstrate the market risk knowledge and FRTB understanding that Ms Muller wanted. It also noted that the claimant was interviewed by Ms Muller and then by three other interviewers before the rejection decision was communicated on 27 June 2022.

The tribunal rejected the claimant's case that the decision was driven by her length of experience. It found that the contemporaneous documents supported the respondent's explanation and did not show any concern by Ms Muller or the interviewers that the claimant was too senior. It placed weight on the fact that the claimant was interviewed at all despite the obvious length of her CV, and on statistical evidence that within the Global Risk Analytics team 66.7% of external hires to Band 5 Vice President roles were aged at least 40, which it said significantly undermined the alleged PCP. The tribunal therefore held that the claimant had not established the PCP alleged, nor that it had been applied to her, and the claim failed.

In its legal discussion the tribunal referred to section 19 EqA 2010, section 136 EqA 2010 on the burden of proof, and the approach in Shamoon, Madarassy, Dziedziak, and Essop. It added final observations that a clearer person specification and a more structured marking system would have been better practice, but those comments did not affect the dismissal of the claim.