EBA Reveals Persistent Gender Imbalance in EU Banking Leadership

The EBA’s latest Diversity Benchmarking Report sends a clear message: progress on gender diversity in EU banking leadership remains slow — and structural imbalances are still deeply embedded.

The benchmarking covered 704 credit institutions and 163 investment firms across the EU, Iceland, and Liechtenstein, assessing diversity across management bodies, including gender, age, geographical origin, educational background, and professional experience.

Key findings:

• Nearly half of institutions still have no women among executive directors
• Women represent only around 12% of CEOs across EU financial institutions
• Female representation is stronger in supervisory functions, but remains materially lower in executive leadership roles
• Around 20% of institutions still do not have a diversity policy in place
• Only about 67% of institutions have set quantitative gender representation targets.

The report also highlights that diversity implementation remains uneven across Member States and institutions.

One of the most important findings is that the issue is no longer only about formal policies — many firms technically comply with governance requirements while failing to achieve meaningful leadership diversity outcomes.

The EBA also continues linking diversity to governance quality and long-term institutional resilience, reinforcing earlier findings that more balanced management bodies are associated with stronger decision-making and improved risk oversight.

Another critical theme is remuneration imbalance.

Related EBA benchmarking data shows:
– women in institutions earned materially less than men on average
– gender pay gaps remain particularly pronounced in senior and higher-paid positions
– nearly 90% of €1m+ earners in EU banking are still men

The broader regulatory direction is becoming increasingly clear:
European supervisors are moving from “policy existence” toward measurable outcomes, accountability, and benchmarking pressure.

For banks and investment firms, diversity is no longer treated as a soft ESG topic.
It is increasingly being framed as a governance, prudential, and supervisory issue.