KPMG’s “Board disclosure of race and ethnicity gains traction” reveals significant changes in board diversity disclosure in proxy statements year-over-year among S&P 500 and Russell 3000 companies.
As of September 2021, 57% of S&P 500 companies and 25% of Russell 3000 companies disclosed the board’s aggregate racial and ethnic diversity.
Of the 73% of S&P 500 companies that disclosed the board’s overall racial and ethnic diversity; 36% disclosed this information on an individual director basis as of September 2021, compared to just 16% that made that disclosure as of January 2021.
Of the 36% of Russell 3000 companies that disclosed the board’s overall racial and ethnic diversity, 17% disclosed this information on an individual director basis as of November 2021, compared to just 5% that made that disclosure as of January 2021.
As of September 2021, of those companies that disclosed consideration of diversity during the director nomination process, 97% of the S&P 500 and 76% of the Russell 3000 say they specifically include racial and ethnic diversity, compared to 89% of the S&P 500 and 61% of the Russell 3000 that made this representation as of January 2021.
Last year, we reported (”Board Diversity”) on KPMG’s nifty new Board Diversity Disclosure Benchmarking Tool, which allows companies to benchmark their board/director diversity disclosure practices by GICS sector, index (Russell 3000 and S&P 500), and company size.
Access additional resources on our Board Diversity page.
This post first appeared in the weekly Society Alert!