EBA has issued final Guidelines on benchmarking of diversity practices, including diversity policies and gender pay gap under CRD and IFD and a Decision on supervisory reporting on diversity benchmarking. The guidelines aim to increase transparency, data quality, and awareness regarding diversity and gender equality within financial institutions. The scope includes institutions and investment firms that are obligated to furnish data on the diversity of their management bodies and the gender pay gap when requested.
These guidelines establish a structured framework for collecting data every three years from a representative sample of institutions and investment firms. The data will be collected at the level of the management body, and the reporting format will be applicable for the first time in 2025, with a reporting date of 31 December 2024. The EBA Board of Supervisors will decide on the technical aspects related to the sampling process.
The legal basis for these guidelines is provided by Article 91(11) CRD, Article 9(1) MiFID II, and Article 34(1) IFD, the reporting will be facilitated through the EBA’s data-collection platform, EUCLID. The guidelines emphasize the importance of a sequential approach and encourage a representative sample in terms of size, nature, and complexity of institutions and investment firms in each Member State.
The guidelines also provide specific criteria for deciding the sample of reporting entities. This includes representation of credit institutions and investment firms of different sizes, with at least 10% inclusion from each size category, and a minimum of 5 entities in cases where percentages result in less than 5 credit institutions. Additionally, at least 10% of the total number of investment firms in the jurisdiction should be included.
In terms of the reporting process, competent authorities are required to submit diversity benchmarking data on an individual basis to the EBA by 15 June of each reporting cycle. The EBA will then perform data quality checks and request corrections or additional explanations where necessary.