Walk into any major financial institution in Hong Kong today, and there is a good chance the person in charge is a woman. Women now hold 45 per cent of senior leadership positions and 37 per cent of board seats in Hong Kong’s financial services industry – double-digit increases since 2018.

These figures come from “Tipping the Scale”, a report published in October 2025 by Women Chief Executives Hong Kong, KPMG China and The Women’s Foundation. The report ranks Hong Kong first among global financial centres for its societal acceptance of women in leadership.

Achieving this took more than a decade of regulatory and cultural change. The report traces the regulatory thread back to 2013, when Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEX) tightened its corporate governance code and added “comply or explain” requirements around board diversity. “The objective was to raise governance standards across the listed issuer ecosystem,” says Bonnie Y Chan, CEO of HKEX.

Further reforms followed. Single-gender boards have been prohibited in Hong Kong’s capital market since January 1, 2025; gender-diverse nomination committees and workforce diversity policies now need to be disclosed.

Fiona Nott, CEO of The Women’s Foundation, sees these reforms as one strand of a wider story. “What’s distinctive about Hong Kong is how different parts of the ecosystem have reinforced one another over decades,” she says.

These include equitable access to education, recognition of professional merit, physical safety and public infrastructure, alongside the support that multigenerational households and foreign domestic workers provide to working families.

Amy Lo, Chairman of UBS Global Wealth Management Asia, and Head and Chief Executive of UBS Hong Kong, gives particular credit to Hong Kong’s family support systems and accessible caregiving services, as they help women stay in the workforce through the years when careers and families compete for attention. It is “much more difficult” for her European colleagues, she says, as they “do not have easy access to domestic help, forcing many to choose between career and family after having children”.

That support is reinforced by what women see around them. Seventy-six per cent of the respondents surveyed for “Tipping the Scale” cited visible female leadership as the single most influential enabler of women’s advancement. “That visibility gives women tremendous encouragement,” Lo says, recalling encountering LinkedIn followers at the Asia Private Banker Summits, excited to see her in person.

The public sector sends a similar signal: 11 of 18 of the government’s permanent secretaries are women, a ratio that Lo says is “very unique about Hong Kong”.

While the ecosystem has produced a leadership pipeline that is remarkably deep by international standards, it does not hold evenly across career stages.

Women enter Hong Kong’s financial services sector in roughly equal numbers to men and report high levels of encouragement early on. That optimism falls sharply as careers progress: 77 per cent of entry-level women feel supported to pursue leadership, dropping to 59 per cent at mid-career before recovering to 68 per cent when at senior level.

This mid-career dip may be explained by the many calculations women face at that stage of their lives. Nott describes the struggles: “Women often can find themselves asking, do I pursue the next leadership role? Do I start or grow a family now? If I take a career break, will there be a clear route back? And will using flexibility affect how my commitment is perceived?”Lo went through this phase herself. “Once you are mid-career, you are at a crossroads, juggling family and career,” she says.

Still, those who choose and manage to climb the ladder only paint part of the picture.

“Representation tells us who’s in the room, but it doesn’t necessarily tell us about their experience once they get there,” Nott says. “The real progress is when women are not only represented, but are advancing, thriving and choosing to stay.”

Addressing that gap between representation and experience requires going beyond policies and compliance. Lo argues that diversity has to be an “organic” part of everyday culture. “Organic means natural – it’s embedded in the ground-level culture,” she explains. “Diversity must be a leadership topic, driven by the tone from the top. It cannot sit with HR alone.”When it works, she says, “leaders naturally consider gender representation during promotion rounds, candidate slates and forum panels”. Alongside culture, organisations should track promotion, sponsorship and retention, not just headcount.

Chan observes that she takes heart from the observation that conversations surrounding diversity have already “shifted from compliance to capability”.

“The ban on single-gender boards is only the first step of a continuing journey,” she says. The focus now is on “ensuring diversity translates into board effectiveness” and on strengthening the leadership pipeline. “Board diversity begins long before an appointment is made, through talent development, succession planning and creating pathways for future leaders.”

Replicating finance’s diversity measures in other industries will take time and may have to follow a different path. Each sector has its own pipeline, its own professional structures, and its own pace of change. The systems that lifted finance might not map neatly onto other sectors – transport or healthcare, for instance.

But the transferable lessons, Nott argues, are clear enough. Visible role models, transparent promotion, career mobility, structured sponsorship, flexible work and clear return pathways all matter. Above all, leadership commitment matters most: 81 per cent of respondents identify visible leadership action as the most effective way their organisations promote gender diversity.

Discussions are already moving beyond finance. This year’s Women Chief Executives Summit brings together leaders from MTR Corporation, the Hospital Authority and other organisations, extending a dialogue that was previously concentrated in banking.

“The opportunity for others,” Nott says, “is to understand what are those levers of success in the financial services and adapt those principles to their own workforce.”Hong Kong’s financial sector has demonstrated what becomes possible when culture, regulation, talent competition and care infrastructure align. Whether that alignment can be sustained, and extended beyond the sector that built it, is the question that will define the years to come.