Benchmarking: Board Diversity Disclosure

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KPMG revealed these board diversity disclosure statistics for the S&P 500 and Russell 3000 (R3000) as of December 2023:

Board gender diversity

99% of the S&P 500 and 88% of the R3000 disclose in some fashion their board’s gender composition.
51% of the S&P 500 and 24% of the R3000 disclose gender by individual directors’ names.
93% of the S&P 500 and 82% of the R3000 disclose the number or percentage of directors identifying as gender-diverse.

Board racial/ethnic diversity

97% of the S&P 500 and 85% of the R3000 disclose in some fashion their board’s racial/ethnic diversity. Note that half of the R3000 are subject to Nasdaq’s board diversity disclosure standard.
42% of the S&P 500 and 20% of the R3000 disclose race/ethnicity by individual directors’ names.
46% of the S&P 500 and 57% of the R3000 disclose the number/percentage of directors identifying with particular racial/ethnic categories.
72% of the S&P 500 and 38% of the R3000 disclose the number/percentage of racially/ethnically diverse directors on the board.

Board LGBTQ

30% of the S&P 500 and 41% of the R3000 disclose in some fashion their board’s LGBTQ composition.
10% of the S&P 500 and 5% of the R3000 disclose LGBTQ status by individual directors’ names.
23% of the S&P 500 and 37% of the R3000 disclose the number/percentage of directors identifying as LGBTQ.

Director search

100% of the S&P 500 and 99% of the R3000 disclose that they incorporate diversity generally in their director search criteria.
94% of the S&P 500 and 79% of the R3000 disclose gender diversity among their search criteria.
94% of the S&P 500 and 78% of the R3000 disclose racial/ethnic diversity among their search criteria.
19% of the S&P 500 and 18% of the R3000 disclose sexual orientation diversity among their search criteria.

Director self-identified race

71% of the S&P 500 and 70% of the R3000 disclose their directors’ self-identified racial categories by director name or by number or percentage of the board identifying with a particular racial/ethnic category.

The post provides sample disclosures that correspond with the foregoing practices.

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