On the shortlist: Improving gender representation – Deutsche Bank

The new Inclusive Recruitment Award recognises firms that are tackling one of the most persistent challenges in financial services – the underrepresentation of women at mid and senior levels. With gender pay gaps still reflecting this imbalance, inclusive recruitment strategies are vital to attract, retain and advance women at all stages of their careers.

Deutsche Bank’s Improving gender representation initiative is one of our shortlisted initiatives and is designed to tackle the under-representation of women in senior roles. Its central goal is to achieve 35% female representation across the three most senior corporate titles, supported by aspirational goals for hiring, retention and promotion. By embedding these goals into cross-business working groups, the initiative ensures that policies and practices remain inclusive while building a strong, gender-diverse pipeline.

Further ambitions include achieving a minimum of 30% women on the Supervisory Board and across levels one and two below the Management Board, alongside gender goals for hiring junior talent. Progress is closely monitored through divisional and regional dashboards, recruitment diversity reviews, and insights from people and belonging surveys.

A wide range of measures underpin these ambitions including leadership development for senior women, inclusive hiring and leadership workshops, mentorship programmes and enhanced paternity leave to normalise active fatherhood.

Impact is already visible: 30% female representation has been reached on the Supervisory Board and 38.8% of MD-VP promotions were women last year.

How does Deutsche Bank aim to close the gap in senior female representation and pay equity?

We have aspired to increase senior female representation across Deutsche Bank for many years. In 2021 we set ourselves the aspirational goal of having women representing at least 35% of our Managing Director, Director, and Vice President population by the end of 2025. We remain focused on this.

Our targeted acceleration, sponsorship and leadership development initiatives to support women, particularly in middle to senior level roles, also helps address underrepresentation in these areas. In addition to our acceleration programmes, we have implemented targeted initiatives to support the development of our talent.

By increasing the visibility and transparency of our diversity data our regional leadership team is provided with key insights on the recruitment, retention and development of female talent.

How do you measure progress? What role do dashboards, data, and feedback play in driving accountability?

To monitor progress, the bank’s senior leadership conduct regular data reviews of our gender and ethnicity metrics – discussing every quarter.

We also produce a monthly gender diversity report which shows:

• The status quo;
• Development versus year-end 2024;
• Key factors impacting gender diversity;
• Where available—the gap to the 2025 goal.

The report is available to all divisions and regions, senior Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Champions as well as our ‘Schneider-Lenné Cadre’ – our global network of senior women who are role models, drive culture change and support the development of diverse talent across the bank.

Qualitative aggregated feedback and results from our annual People survey is also analysed to draw insights that better inform action-planning to meet goals. This year, the survey questions were revised to include a new Leadership, Learning & Development focus topic to see how the bank can better support employees to develop skills and competencies and further drive accountability.

What difference have you seen in recruitment and promotion outcomes since the strategy was introduced?

We’re working to make our hiring practices more inclusive, equitable and fair because we know that some talent face more headwinds that can limit their access to opportunities. We have broadened our attraction and search initiatives to create a more diverse talent pool and we’ve engaged DEI-focused recruitment agencies to support us in these efforts.

We’ve also issued guidance to hiring managers to make the hiring process more inclusive – sharing the importance of DEI, the crucial role managers play and providing practical tips to support inclusive hiring practices. In addition, all non-confidential Managing Director roles are advertised to proactively engage both internal and external female talent into the candidate pool.

We have increased female representation in succession processes and provide bespoke development programmes for female talent – last year 38.8% of Managing Director, Director and Vice President promotions were female.

How does your recruitment approach link to Deutsche Bank’s wider culture change, including leadership behaviours, inclusion training, and support for managers?

DEI is a cornerstone of the bank’s Aspirational Culture (launched in 2024) – our stated values and behaviours that put a spotlight on what all employees are expected to demonstrate. Specifically, employees are empowered to excel together every day, forging a strong culture where acting with integrity, speaking up, challenging the status quo, embracing diverse views and treating everyone fairly are cultural norms.

The role of leadership is a fundamental part of becoming the Global Hausbank, the European champion and first choice for our clients.

Our bespoke Leadership Kompass is a set of eight behaviours that act as a ‘north star’ and serve as a guide to define our approach to leadership. We expect our leaders to exemplify and practice these behaviours every day to become the best versions of themselves, to inspire their team members and deliver our business strategy in a sustainable way.

We continue to provide our leaders with practical “Inclusive Leadership Training” so that they can exemplify these behaviours every day. Additionally, we have updated job advertisements, enhanced interviewing and screening processes and refreshed mandatory training modules.