Deutsche Bank sets an implicit quota of 50% women for senior recruitments
Deutsche Bank will need to appoint women to around 50% of vacant leadership positions to meet its new 2025 gender target, according to a Financial Times calculation.
Last week, Germany's largest lender pledged to increase the share of women among its 600 or so senior executives to at least 30% by 2025, from 24% currently.
However, only a limited number of these positions become vacant each year, so that goal can only be achieved if the lender chooses female candidates at least for all other senior executive hires and promotions, according to FT figures.
"Greater diversity among senior executives is a business necessity for us," Michael Ilgner, Deutsche's global head of human resources, told the Financial Times. "This will make us stronger because there is ample evidence that more diverse teams perform better and adapt faster to a changing environment."
Ilgner declined to comment on FT's estimate, but said the new gender quota would not change the bank's individual hiring decisions. "We will of course choose the most suitable candidate for a position. We don't want to compromise on quality. "
Germany's largest lender on Thursday announced gender goals alongside green finance goals as part of a broader effort to make environmental, social and governance principles "the new normal for Deutsche Bank".
The self-imposed quota is stricter than the requirements of German law. As of 2016, 30% of supervisory board seats must be occupied by women – a rule Deutsche respects. Earlier this year, new legal requirements requiring listed companies to have at least one woman on the board also came into effect.
Deutsche also announced targets to increase the share of female staff in middle management – which represents thousands of CEO, director and vice-president positions – from 29% now to 35% by 2025.
Ilgner acknowledged that achieving the goals would not be easy. "Our goals are ambitious but achievable if we implement the actions we have identified in a consistent manner," he said, adding that the goals and close monitoring of intermediate outcomes would help increase awareness of biases. unconscious.
The measures include linking the compensation of senior executives at Deutsche to the achievement of these goals. "This is one of several parameters that have an influence on the variable compensation of our management," said Ilgner, adding that Deutsche has also supported female interns and graduates to "increase the talent pool".
Deutsche's gender quota is roughly in line with its peers. Goldman Sachs aims to increase the share of female vice presidents to 40% by 2025, while HSBC has targeted 35% of "leadership positions" to be filled by women in the same year. Credit Suisse and Bank of America have not published gender equality targets.
Bayer, the German medicines and agrochemicals group, said in February that it wanted to increase the share of women among its 540 executives to at least 33% by 2024.
Ilgner acknowledged in a speech to investors on Thursday that Deutsche has so far "fallen short of the broader gender diversity goals we set for ourselves in 2019". Over the past three years, the share of women in senior management at the lender has largely stagnated.
Deutsche's ongoing restructuring has made it more difficult to meet targets, he said. In mid-2019, the lender announced it would cut 18,000 jobs by the end of 2022 as part of a partial withdrawal from the investment bank. Since then, Deutsche has reduced external recruitments and significantly reduced the number of senior jobs.
Posted in International News | Tagged banking, Deutsche Bank, gender, quota, recruitment, Senior, women
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