Old Mutual Wealth parent company Old Mutual Wealth plc has been praised for its efforts to improve ethnic diversity among its executives, having been ranked in the top 10 FTSE 100 companies measured by diversity and leadership.

The South African-owned wealth management firm was ranked in sixth in a new study from Green Park, which found that ethnic diversity in the leadership pipeline within FTSE 100 companies increased by 5% to it’s highest level in four years.

Old Mutual plc celebrated its 170th anniversary in 2015. It also owns Intrinsic, AAM Advisory and Quilter Cheviot. The firm also oversees £127.3bn worth of customer investments.

Despite Old Mutual’s progress, 58% or six-in-10 main boards in the FTSE 100, currently have no ethnic minorities present and there has also been an 18% decrease in the number of people from ethnic backgrounds holding senior positions at chair, CEO and CFO level.

Green Park’s Leadership 10,000 report also found that there are no female ethnic minority CEOs or CFOs in the FTSE 100 and women still hold just 6% of the top 300 jobs.

The news comes despite the Government’s Parker Review, which recommended that no FTSE 100 board should be comprised exclusively of white people by 2020.

InterContinental Hotels Group were ranked at number one by Green Park in the top 10 FTSE 100 companies measured by diversity of leadership, with Standard Chartered in second place.

Baroness McGregor-Smith , vice-chair of DRIVE and author of ‘Race in the workplace: The McGregor-Smith review’ said: “Despite the Leadership 10,000 report showing that every industry in the FTSE 100 still needs to do better with proportional diversity, the findings provide actionable baseline data for the index to improve their leadership's diversity, moving them closer to achieving the diversity dividend.

“This report's data paints a clear picture of current-state diversity across the index and can be used to pro-actively take diversity conversations to the boards of our leading companies to show minority communities that they are a priority to the companies they work for.”