Australia’s listed insurers perform better than their Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) counterparts when it comes to gender equality, according to a KPMG report.

The research, which included seven insurance companies, was compiled for the ASX Education and Research Program.

A KPMG spokesman told insuranceNEWS.com.au the seven insurance companies in the survey are AMP, Cover-More Group, IAG, Medibank, QBE, Steadfast and Suncorp.

Industry-specific figures obtained by insuranceNEWS.com.au show women make up 58% of insurers’ workforces, higher than the 41% representation for the rest of the field.

Insurers have 35% female senior executives and 37% female non-executive directors, compared with 26% in both categories for the other ASX firms.

The report says 99% of the top 200 companies have established a diversity report and most have disclosed measurable objectives to bring about improvements, but very few have set or disclosed transparent quantitative goals.

“Our studies have shown that those companies which disclosed clear quantifiable objectives like ‘achieving 35% of women at a senior management level by 2015’ demonstrated a higher level of gender diversity than those which did not set quantitative targets,” KPMG People Advisory Partner Ben Travers said.

“Publicly committing to quantifiable objectives really does drive good diversity outcomes.”