Deutsche Bank sets an implicit 50% women’s quota for recruitment for the elderly

The Financial Times estimates that Deutsche Bank will have to appoint women to about 50 percent of vacant senior management positions.

Germany’s largest lender last week promised that the share of women among the top 600 executives would rise by at least 30 percent by 2025, now more than 24 percent.

A limited number of these jobs remain vacant each year, however, so this goal can be met if the lender selects at least one female candidate in all other senior recruitments and promotions, according to FT data.

“Greater diversity among senior executives is a business need for us,” Deutsche Chief Human Resources Officer Michael Ilgner told the Financial Times. “This will make us tremendous, as it is evidence that diverse teams are achieving better results and adapting more quickly to a changing environment.”

Ilgner declined to comment on the FT’s calculation, but said the new gender quota would not change the bank’s hiring decisions. “Of course, we will choose the most suitable candidate for the position. We don’t want to compromise on quality. ”

Germany’s largest lender announced gender targets on Thursday, along with green funding a wider thrust making the principles of the environment, society and governance a “new normal for Deutsche Bank”.

The self-imposed quota is more stringent than the requirements set out in German law. Since 2016, 30% of the seats on the supervisory board must be women, a rule that Deutsche meets. Earlier this year, new legal requirements were introduced for listed companies to include at least one member of a women’s board of directors.

Deutsche has also announced targets to increase the share of female employees in central management (which includes thousands of managing directors, executives and vice presidents), from 29 percent to 35 percent by 2025.

Ilgner acknowledged that meeting the goals would not be easy. “Our goals are ambitious, but they can be achieved if we consistently carry out the identified actions,” he said, adding that goals and close monitoring of provisional results would help increase awareness of unconscious biases.

Among the measures is to link the salary of senior Deutsche executives to meeting these goals. “This has been part of a number of parameters that affect the variable compensation of our management,” Ilgner said, adding that Deutsche also supports female interns and graduates to “increase the talent pool”.

Deutsche’s gender share roughly matches that of its peers. Goldman Sachs aims to raise its female vice president by 4025 by 2025. HSBC, meanwhile, has focused on 35 percent of women’s “senior management” in the same year. Credit Suisse and Bank of America have not published gender equality targets.

Bayer, a German drug and agrochemical group, said in February that it wanted to raise the share of women among its 540 senior executives by at least 33 percent by 2024.

In a speech to investors on Thursday, Ilgner acknowledged that Deutsche has so far “achieved broader goals of gender diversity by 2019.” Over the past three years, the share of women in senior management of lenders has been fully established.

He said Deutsche’s ongoing restructuring made it difficult to achieve the goals. In mid-2019, the lender announced it would cut 18,000 jobs by the end of its 20,000 return on investment banks. Since then, Deutsche has reduced outsourcing and significantly reduced the number of older jobs.