The wealth and investment industry is subject to constant hand-wringing about the lack of women in its top echelons, however new research shows that financial services is the best-performing industry when it comes to female representation on boards.

With the sector perhaps claiming the “best of a bad bunch” accolade, new research from Credit Suisse shows women occupy 22.2 percent of board positions in global financial services, narrowly edging out other industries like consumer discretionary (22.1) and healthcare (21.6) to take the top spot.

However financial services had not made as much progress over the last year...