LONDON, March 5 (Reuters) - Lloyd's of London

has hit a short-term target of filling 35% of leadership roles

with women, although less than half of firms in the commercial

insurance market had hit the mark, it said on Tuesday.

Lloyd's said it needed to make further progress to improve

culture after reporting that only 45% of managing agents and

brokers had helped propel the diversity figure to its overall

end-2023 target.

"Whilst we've hit our short term target ... and the market

continues to make progress on representation of diverse groups,

we still have a way to go on our culture journey," Lloyd's Chief

People Officer Sara Gomez said.

Lloyd's set the end-2023 target in 2020 after staff raised

concerns about sexual harassment and daytime drinking.

In its fifth Market Policies and Practices report, Lloyd's

said the proportion of women in leadership roles rose by 3

percentage points, with improvements at board level, in

executive committees and direct reports of executive committees.

Lloyd's, which employs around 57,000 people in insurance and

broking firms and is aiming for gender parity by 2030, said

women now made up more than 43% of the 57,000-strong workforce

and that 46% of new hires were women in 2023.

Ethnically diverse hires made up 21% of new staff last year,

up 4 percentage points, more than 71% of firms were working to

remove bias from recruitment processes and more than half had

inclusivity policies and practices, such as menopause support,

Lloyd's said.

Marcos Alvarez, global head of insurance at DBRS

Morningstar, said it remained to be seen whether Lloyd's would

penalize firms who failed to meet the 35% target by end-2023.

Lloyd's of London's Chief Executive John Neal told Reuters

last year that firms failing to meet expectations around

diversity and inclusion "can't trade in the market".

(Additional reporting by Carolyn Cohn)