On 24 April 2023, the European Banking Authority (EBA) published a consultation paper on draft guidelines on the benchmarking of diversity practices including diversity policies and gender pay gap under the Capital Requirements Directive IV (CRD IV) and the Investment Firms Directive (IFD).

The draft guidelines are addressed to Member State competent authorities (NCAs).

They specify, for the purposes of the harmonised benchmarking of diversity practices in accordance with Article 91(11) of the CRD IV and Article 26 of the IFD, the information to be provided by institutions and investment firms unless they are small and non-interconnected, to NCAs and from NCAs to the EBA for benchmarking diversity practices, including information disclosed in accordance with Article 435(2)(c) of the Capital Requirements Regulation and under Article 48 of the Investment Firms Regulation. Furthermore the guidelines specify for the purposes of the harmonised benchmarking of the gender pay-gap at the level of the management body, the information to be provided by institutions and investment firms, unless they are small and non-interconnected, to NCAs in accordance with Article 75(1) of the CRD IV and Article 34(1) of the IFD and from NCAs to the EBA.

The benchmarking of diversity practices will allow NCAs to monitor diversity trends over time, including the identification of common practices for diversity policies and information on the gender pay gap at the level of the management body. The aspects of diversity that will be analysed concern the gender, age, educational and professional background as well as the geographical provenance of members of the management bodies. The benchmarking of diversity practices should be based on a representative sample of institutions and investment firms.

Templates for the data collection are included in the draft guidelines. Data will be collected via the EBA’s data collection platform (EUCLID) and additional technical information for NCAs regarding the submission of data will be provided separately. NCAs will inform the participants of the data collection accordingly.

The EBA will analyse the diversity practices, including diversity policies and the gender pay gap at the level of the management body and publish a benchmarking report at the EU level, including a country-by-country analysis every three years. The data is not collected annually as the composition of the management bodies is not expected to change significantly in the short term but should change in the longer term through taking appropriate measures within institutions and investment firms.

The deadline for comments on the consultation paper is 24 July 2023.

The EBA plans that the first data on the diversity practices under the guidelines should be reported in 2025 with a reference date of 31 December 2024, including in situations where the financial year differs from the calendar year.