An effective board starts with having the right members, making board composition a key issue for today’s banking industry. Forty-five percent of the directors and executives responding to Bank Directors’ 2018 Compensation Survey, sponsored by Compensation Advisors, a member of Meyer-Chatfield Group, say that developing a board succession plan is a top challenge related to board composition, followed by the recruitment of tech-savvy directors, at 44 percent.
Emily McCormick, VP of Research for Bank Director, provides an Executive Summary:
An effective board starts with having the right members, making board composition a key issue for today’s banking industry. Forty-five percent of the directors and executives responding to Bank Director’s 2018 Compensation Survey, sponsored by Compensation Advisors, a member of Meyer-Chatfield Group, say that developing a board succession plan is a top challenge related to board composition, followed by the recruitment of tech-savvy directors, at 44 percent.
More than 200 chief executive officers, human resources officers, senior executives and board members participated in the survey, conducted in March and April 2018, which examines the talent challenges faced by the banking industry. The survey also includes data collected from proxy statements to reveal how—and how much—CEOs, directors and chairmen were compensated in fiscal year 2017.
Thirty-five percent of respondents cite the recruitment of female directors as a top board challenge, an area where the industry appears to have made some improvement. Seventy-seven percent of respondents indicate that their board has at least one female member, up from two-thirds last year. However, boards still have progress to make, with just 14 percent indicating that their board has three or more female members. And boards still struggle to represent diverse ethnic backgrounds—77 percent report that their board doesn’t have a single ethnically diverse director. They also need to gain more age-diverse views, with just 16 percent reporting they have a director who is aged 40 years old or younger.
Conducting an effective board evaluation—which rates the effectiveness of individual directors, as well as the board—is cited by 42 percent as a top governance challenge. Board evaluations are often touted as effective tools to fuel board diversity efforts, because they identify ineffective directors and help push them out of the boardroom, leaving empty seats to be filled with the skill sets, expertise and backgrounds needed by today’s board.