Banking and capital markets, often viewed as dominated by men, achieved high scores in a newly released survey measuring the diversity in their director ranks.

In 2016, women made up 26% of the boards in the banking and capital markets industry, which tied with the retail industry, according to a survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers. The average rate of women on boards of companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was 21%.

In addition, the 21 companies that the survey defined as its banking and capital markets sector have shored up their position by adding more women to their boards. About 13% of new directors in 2016 were women.

The insurance industry, however, scored relatively poorly, with women making up only 21% of its directors and only 7% of its new directors last year - the lowest percentage of any of the industries examined in the report.

“Companies in every industry are feeling investor pressure to refresh their boards, and many are focusing on diversity and adding more women directors,” said Paula Loop, who heads PricewaterhouseCoopers’s governance insights center, which was set up several years ago to review corporate governance issues and financial accounting standards.

However, she noted that gender diversity was only one indicator of the efforts boards were making to include people with varied backgrounds and skills. “Diversity is more than a gender issue - it’s about race, ethnicity, skills, experience, age and even geography, in addition to diversity of thought and perspective,” she said.

The survey looked at 2 measures that companies can use to accelerate board change: (i) mandatory retirement age, and (ii) term limits for directors.

• e.g., fewer than 66% of the banking and capital markets companies surveyed had a mandatory retirement age for directors, a situation that leads to many directors serving well into their 70s. By contrast, 73% of S&P 500 companies have set such an age limit.