Malaysian banks lead Southeast Asian peers for board diversity

Bloomberg

Malaysia’s large banks have the highest board representation for women across the Southeast Asian region, outpacing peers in Singapore and the Philippines where the proportion is below 15 percent.
Women make up more than 30 percent of the boards of top Malaysian lenders, compared with only 9 percent on average in the Philippines, and 13 percent in Singapore, according to data compiled by Bloomberg from published information on the three largest banks in each of five countries.
The data underlines the distance that many of the region’s banks still need to travel to improve gender diversity, according to Lawrence Loh, an associate professor at National University of Singapore. “As an outcome, inequality is just not acceptable,” said Loh, who has published research suggesting that gender diversity improves corporate governance at Singapore companies.
Banks with more women on their boards tend to perform better in measures including return on assets when female participation reaches a “critical level” of between 13 percent and 17 percent, provided the banks are well capitalised, according to a February study published by the US Federal Reserve.
The outperformance of Malaysian banks is likely due to the country’s corporate governance code, which requires that women hold at least 30 percent of board seats at local firms, said Meggin Thwing Eastman, the Boston-based head of impact and screening research at MSCI Inc.