Examining Gender Equality Information in the Consolidated Mandatory Non-Financial Statements of a Cooperative Banking Group: A Longitudinal Analysis

With the 2014/95/EU Directive, implemented in Italy with Legislative Decree No. 254/2016, public interest entities with specific requirements, including credit institutions, are obliged to report several items of non-financial information (NFI), especially in terms of gender equality, due to the importance of this aspect in the European agenda, in a non-financial statement (NFS). It remains an open question whether NFI disclosure regulations lead to an improvement in reporting quality. In this paper we investigate the quality of the information on gender equality disclosed in the consolidated mandatory NFSs (CNFSs) for the Iccrea Cooperative Banking Group (ICBG) for 2017–2021. We selected ICBG because of the dearth of studies on the cooperative banking sector, which represent a relevant component of the national banking system in Italy. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first study to explore the quality of information on gender equality in mandatory NFSs for a cooperative banking group using a longitudinal approach. The analysis of the case study’s findings provides evidence that ICBG worked to align its gender information with the Decree requirements and the GRI standards. The longitudinal analysis highlights that, during the five years under study, the ICBG’s information on gender came to fully reflect the EU and Italian requirements.