Every constituent of the FTSE 100 except for six companies has at least one board member of an ethnic minority background, new research found.
The Parker Review found that at the start of last year, there were 164 directors from a minority ethnic background out of a total of 1,056 positions across the biggest-listed UK companies.
Out of the 100 companies in the index, 42 were found to have between two and nine minority ethnic directors on their boards.
In 2015 John Parker, the head of the review, laid out a target for all FTSE 100 companies to have at least one ethnic minority director by December 2021.
Whilst the results indicated some companies still fell short of this target it is still a sharp rise from five years prior when only around 50% of constituents had a racial minority director.
A similar goal was put in place for the FTSE 250 but with a deadline of 2024.
Currently around half of the companies on this index have achieved the target.
“Increasing the population of ethnically diverse candidates in the boardroom will result in greater opportunities for candidates to move forward in the future into chair roles,” said John Parker.
He added: “You have got to build boards with the very best talent in today’s very competitive world, with a range of gender and ethnic diversity.”
However, the review did find that just under 90% of the ethnic minority directors are employed as non-executive directors.
Only six chief executive officers at FTSE 100 companies are from racial minority backgrounds.