More directors in S’pore-listed firms paid less than $50,000 in 2025: Report

SINGAPORE - More Singapore-listed company directors received less than $50,000 in 2025 compared with previous years, suggesting downward pressure on board remuneration, according to a Nov 4 study.

However, these results may also be due to more companies providing disclosures, according to rules that were announced in 2023.

The percentage of independent directors getting less than $50,000 jumped to 29 per cent in 2025, compared with 16 per cent in 2023, said the report, which is produced every two years by the Singapore Institute of Directors, in collaboration with Deloitte and Handshakes.

The report, now in its sixth edition, also showed that fewer independent directors were earning between $100,001 and $150,000 in 2025.

Back in 2023, some 42 per cent of independent directors were getting between $100,001 and $150,000. But in 2025, this dropped to 20.6 per cent.

The percentage of non-independent, non-executive directors earning between $100,001 and $150,000 fell too. In 2023, 35 per cent of them were earning within this bracket but in 2025, this dropped to 17.4 per cent.

However, non-independent, non-executive directors earning less than $50,000 increased to 34.7 per cent in 2025, compared with 18.1 per cent in 2023.

“The data seems to suggest that there is a shift towards slightly lower directors’ fees,” said the report’s co-lead author, Professor Ho Yew Kee from the City University of Hong Kong.

Still, there was no information on remuneration disclosed for around 13 per cent of independent directors, and around 14 per cent of non-independent, non-executive directors.

“Singapore continues to make steady progress in enhancing remuneration disclosures, particularly for directors and chief executive officers.

“Beyond this, however, there remains limited visibility into how remuneration is structured and how it aligns with performance outcomes,” the report said.

It added that boards should take the opportunity to provide more detail and clarity on this front.

“This would mean disclosing the breakdown of pay into fixed, variable, equity-based, benefits, pensions and one-off elements,” it said.

Analysis for the report was provided by academic partners including the City University of Hong Kong, Nanyang Technological University and Singapore Institute of Technology. It is supported by the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority and the Singapore Exchange (SGX).

Large-cap firms, as expected, have the highest concentration of independent directors in the $100,001 to $150,000 remuneration band, reflecting their greater complexity, board responsibilities and ability to offer more competitive compensation, the report said.

Mid-cap firms showed the largest share of independent directors in the $50,001 to $100,000 band, while small-cap firms continue to report the highest proportion of independent directors earning less than $50,000.

Among director-CEOs, more than a quarter (26.5 per cent) earned more than $1 million, making them the highest-paid group of board members.

The study also noted that more companies were providing detailed remuneration disclosures for their director-CEOs, with the proportion disclosing this information rising to over 69 per cent in 2025, up from about 26 per cent in 2023.

“This significant increase reflects the impact of SGX’s revised listing rules and growing stakeholder expectations around pay transparency at the top leadership level,” the study said.

At a panel discussion to launch the report, Mr Michael Tang, head of listing compliance at SGX’s regulatory arm, said there was concern at first that disclosing directors’ remuneration was sensitive and could lead to directors getting poached.

But there was also other feedback that transparency to shareholders was important, he said.

Prof Ho added that firms can review director fees and their link to performance, and the mechanism to ensure that the directors are paid appropriately and adequately.

Improving gender diversity on boards

The percentage of women serving on boards almost doubled over the past decade, the study noted.

But the increase has been at a gradual pace, which makes gender diversity an issue that boards need to continue to work on, it added.

Of the 3,796 board seats in Singapore’s 615 listed companies, over 3,100 of them – or over 80 per cent – are still occupied by men.

Still, the number of companies with no women directors at all has fallen over the past decade.

Some 30 per cent of companies still have no women directors in 2025, but this is a sharp drop from the 56 per cent of such firms in 2014.

Overall, only 29 per cent of all boards have more than one woman director. Just four companies have five women on their boards.

The study said: “The trend of growing gender diversity on boards aligns with developments observed in several stock exchanges across the region, although the overall representation of women directors in Singapore remains relatively low.”

In Australia, women held 39.3 per cent of board seats among the stock exchange’s top 100 companies, as at June 30.

“While Singapore’s figures are modest by comparison, they nonetheless reflect a steady improvement in gender diversity at the board level,” the study noted.

Deloitte Singapore country managing partner Shariq Barmaky, who was also on the panel, said it is not just about increasing the number of women, but about having diversity.

“That’s really for the purpose of having a robust discussion – having diversity of thought, diversity of views for the board to come up with the right decision,” he noted.

“As the world becomes more complex, having people who’ve got diverse abilities (will help firms) to be able to solve different multifaceted problems.”

More younger directors coming on board

The median age of the directors on the boards of Singapore-listed companies remains 60 years in 2025, similar to 2023, the study showed.

Executive directors and non-independent, non-executive directors tend to be younger, in the 51- to 60-year-old age range.

But for independent directors, the age group with the highest percentage of directors is in the 61- to 70-year-old range.

The youngest director is 24 years old, at a small-cap firm, while the oldest is 96 years old.

However, when it comes to newly appointed directors, some 64 per cent of them are under 60 years old, which suggests a trend towards the appointment of younger directors in recent years, the study said.

But the average age of directors is unlikely to decrease over the years, as Singapore has an ageing population, noted NTU’s Associate Professor Victor Yeo, who is the co-lead author of the report.

Still, the study noted that the nine-year rule introduced in 2023 has also driven a significant wave of renewal, especially among independent directors.

The nine-year rule is an SGX regulation that caps the tenure of independent directors on the boards of listed companies at nine years, after which they are no longer considered independent.

Almost half of independent directors in 2025 are newly appointed. Of the 800 independent director appointments in 2023 and 2024, nearly half were first-time directors who had never served on an SGX-listed board before.

SGX RegCo chief executive Tan Boon Gin said in his opening speech that in 2021, the study showed that boards were hanging on to their independent directors and they were not progressing in terms of renewal or diversity.

This gave rise to the hard cap of nine years, which has had a positive effect as the proportion of long-serving independent directors has fallen, he said.

“We will continue to do our part to ensure that regulatory objectives are met, and we look forward to more eureka moments that will transform and benefit our market.”

Singapore has made progress in raising diversity on boards, the study added.

It noted that SGX requires targets, plans, timelines and progress for board diversity policies.

“Broadly speaking, the current situation is that we have many boards now disclosing some gender statistics and more often than not, a diversity policy,” the study said.

“In encouraging boards to publish concrete trajectories rather than narrative statements, the hope is that disclosures would move from boilerplate statements to measurable progress and impact.”

A central tenet of this is disclosing board skills matrices, which helps to explain the link between a company’s future strategy and the extent of capabilities and experiences required by its board to be effective.

They also should map the board’s current state of play, which gives it the ability to address the question of how it intends to tackle identified gaps through director recruitment or development.

“This will make the disclosure of hard targets more meaningful, especially in the context of board renewal, given the introduction of hard nine-year term limits for independent directors,” the study said.