EBA consults on guidance on benchmarking of diversity practices

The European Banking Authority (EBA) launched today a consultation on Guidelines on the benchmarking of diversity practices including diversity policies and gender pay gap under the Capital Requirements Directive (CRD) and the Investment Firms Directive (IFD). The EBA has been collecting data on diversity since 2015 based on information requests. The issuance of these Guidelines will lead to a higher level of transparency regarding the EBA’s work on the topic of diversity and gender equality and will help improve the quality of the collected data as well as the awareness of all stakeholders on these topics. The consultation runs until 24 July 2023.

The Guidelines cover the collection of data on institutions and investment firms diversity policies, diversity practices and the gender pay-gap at the level of the management body, will apply to institutions and investment firms and include templates and instructions for the collection of diversity data, which currently is foreseen every three years.

The Guidelines aim at ensuring that the benchmarking covers a representative sample of institutions and investment firms in each Member State. Further technical instructions on the data submission will be provided to institutions selected by competent authorities to be part of the sample.

Consultation process

Comments to this consultation can be sent to the EBA by clicking on the "send your comments" button on the consultation page. Please note that the deadline for the submission of comments is 24 July 2023. All received contributions will be published at the end of the consultation, unless requested otherwise.

A public hearing on the draft Guidelines on the diversity benchmarking exercise will take place via conference call on 12 June 2023  from 15:00 to 16:00 CEST.

Legal basis and next steps

Under Article 91(11) ofthe CRD, the EBA and competent authorities are required to benchmark diversity practices in institutions’ management bodies. The same Article applies to investment firms under  as specified in Article 9(1) of the Directive on Markets in Financial Instruments (MiFID). The EBA and the competent authorities are also mandated to collect information on the gender pay gap of members of the management body under Article 75(1) of the CRD and 34(1) of the IFD.

The new reporting format is expected to apply for the collection of data in 2025 for the financial year 2024.