THINK tank New Financial has published a detailed report of the analysis it provided to the Gadhia Review on female representation on executive committees and boards across UK financial services, revealing that while 23 per cent of board directors of UK financial services companies are women but only 14 per cent of executive committee members are female

The report found that there was a major difference between executive committees (excos) and boards when it comes to gender diversity – for example, for investment banks, average female representation on boards at 30 per cent is nearly triple that on excos at just 12 per cent.

There is also a wide range of gender diversity across different sectors in our sample on both excos (from 10 per cent for private equity ranging up to 24% per cent for challenger banks) and boards (just seven per cent for fintech and up to 31 per cent for banking groups).

Yasmine Chinwala, partner at New Financial and author of the report, said: “The data clearly shows that without an active focus on improving gender balance in the executive pipeline, it just won’t happen.”