Deutsche Bank must hire a woman for 50% of new senior roles to meet its 2025 gender target, according to a report

• Deutsche Bank must hire a women in half of its new senior roles to achieve its 2025 gender goal, FT calculations suggest.
• The bank wants women to make up 30% of its 600 senior executives by 2025, up from 24% now.
• Michael Ilgner, Deutsche Bank's human resources head, told the FT this wouldn't affect individual hiring choices.

Deutsche Bank must appoint women to about half of new senior roles to achieve its 2025 gender target, according to a Financial Times report published Sunday.

Managers at the German bank said on Thursday during a briefing that the lender wanted more women in top management positions.

Its goal is for women to make up 30% of senior executives by 2025, compared to 24% now. The bank has a group of 600 senior executives.

Vacancies for these positions are rare. Deutsche Bank's target can only be met if it hires or promotes a woman in at least half of new senior hires or promotions, according to the FT's calculations.

"Greater diversity among senior executives is a business necessity for us," Michael Ilgner, Deutsche Bank's global head of human resources, told the FT. "This will make us stronger because there is ample evidence that more diverse teams perform better and adapt faster to a changing environment."

Ilgner declined to comment on the FT's new calculations, but said the new gender quota wouldn't have an impact on the bank's individual hiring decisions. "We will of course choose the most suitable candidate for a position. We don't want to compromise on quality."

In the briefing on Thursday, Ilgner said Deutsche Bank had "fallen short of the wider gender diversity goals we set in 2019." Job cuts and restructuring made it more difficult to meet its gender targets, he said.

The lender had provided support to female interns and graduates to "increase the talent pool," he added.

CEO Christian Sewing said Thursday that the bank wanted to increase the number of women in managing director, director, and vice president roles to 30% by 2025, up from 29% now.

German law requires 30% of supervisory board seats to be held by women, and at least one management board member must be female.

Other banks have also announced plans for taking on more women in senior positions. Goldman Sachs aims to increase the number of female vice presidents to 40% by 2025, while HSBC wants to have 35% of its top leadership roles to be filled by women in 2025.