Report from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council on benchmarking of diversity practices under Directive 2013/36/EU

It has been widely acknowledged that weaknesses in governance arrangements and in the monitoring of management decisions contributed to less prudent risk taking behaviour from the part of institutions in the run-up to the financial crisis of 2007-2008.

To address this, the Capital Requirements Directive (CRD) aims to strengthen the ability of the management bodies of credit institutions and investment firms (hereafter referred to as ‘institutions’) to exercise effective oversight and decision making through a series of measures, including by ensuring that the composition of management bodies is sufficiently diverse.

Article 161(5) of the CRD requires the Commission to review and report to the European Parliament and the Council on the results achieved under the diversity benchmarking, including the appropriateness of benchmarking diversity practices. This report is prepared in view of this requirement.