More men than women were appointed to the boards of large financial services firms in Europe last year, even as nearly a third of companies risked falling short of the EU’s upcoming plans to impose mandatory quotas for women on corporate boards.
A survey from the consultancy firm EY published on Monday reveals that 44% of non-executive appointments in 2023 were women, down from 51% a year earlier.
The European Financial Services Boardroom Monitor also shows that nearly a third of listed financial services firms – 31% –continue to fall short of the EU’s looming targets for gender diversity.
By June 2026, the EU will begin implementing a legally binding 40% quota for women on corporate boards, in what European lawmakers described as a landmark deal for gender equality.
Omar Ali, the managing partner for EMEIA financial services at EY, warned firms against undoing the “excellent progress” of the past few years. “It has been evidenced time and again that boardroom diversity is a driver of outperformance,” he said in a statement.
The survey suggests that C-suite experience – referring to experience in roles such as chief executive officer or chief financial officer – was the top criteria for recruiters in 2023. EY’s data, which includes countries in the EU as well as the UK, Norway and Switzerland, suggests female directors remain significantly less likely than their male counterparts to have this experience or have held a senior board position.
Ali described the demand for C-suite experience as “understandable and to be expected” but this “should not, however, come at the cost of better balancing gender representation across Europe’s financial boardrooms”, he noted.
“Recruitment of new board directors should encourage new skills and expertise entering the boardroom,” Ali added. “The 40% level of female representation at board level is a minimum to build from, not a level to work towards.”
In 2022, women occupied 32.2% of boardroom positions across the EU, according to the European Institute for Gender Equality. The figure varied widely across member states. Italy, the Netherlands and Denmark met the threshold in 2022, while France, home to a 40% women-on-boards quota, surpassed it. In Hungary, Estonia and Cyprus, in contrast, women accounted for only one in 10 board members.
