Number of notaries added this year has remained the same for the first time

After increasing annually since the creation of this position, the number of newly appointed notaries this year remains unchanged for the first time, at 224. The number of newly appointed notaries decreased by 4 to a total of 1,234, while the number of candidate notaries increased by 20 to 1,972. This brings the total number of KNB members to 3,430.

Men traditionally make up the majority of civil-law notaries, but women are slowly gaining ground. While less than 27 percent of civil-law notaries were women in 2020, this year that has grown to almost 30 percent. Among candidate civil-law notaries, where the male-to-female ratio is reversed, the number of women is also slowly increasing: from almost 69 percent in 2020 to over 71 percent now. Only the associate civil-law notaries show a different picture. There too, women are in the majority, but here the number of men is actually increasing. While less than 28 percent of associate civil-law notaries were men in 2020, this year their share has grown to 29.5 percent.

Age structure
It will come as no surprise that civil-law notaries are, on average, older than junior civil-law notaries. While those in their fifties and sixties make up 65 percent of the former, junior civil-law notaries comprise 60 percent of the population, and those in their twenties and thirties make up 60 percent of the junior civil-law notary population. Junior civil-law notaries fall somewhere in between, with those in their forties making up the largest age group, at 42 percent.

Notary offices
Compared to last year, there are 11 fewer notary offices in the Netherlands this year. The total now stands at 901. Of these, slightly less than half (433) are sole proprietorships.