My contribution to a board
A board considering me would be getting a strategist who has spent his career on long horizons and correlated risks: crop losses that arrive across a whole river basin in one season, and interest-rate promises that last forty years. I am used to recommending a course that makes the next two years look worse in exchange for a sounder position in the tenth, and to defending it to sales leaders and shareholder directors who disagree. In a company exposed to weather, commodity prices or long-lived assets, that habit is useful at the moment a board is asked to commit capital it cannot easily recover.
I would also bring the discipline of the unfavourable scenario. Before any major decision of ours reaches the board, my team shows it under the conditions that would make it fail, and I know how often a board paper presents only the plan management prefers. I would ask for the unfavourable case early and without hostility, and I would expect to be asked the same of my own suggestions.
There are things I would not claim. I am not an accountant, and I would not offer myself as an audit committee's financial expert. I have never run a farm, a processing plant or a utility network. My contribution would be on strategy, risk and the allocation of capital, and I would rely on management and fellow directors for operating knowledge I lack. I would want a full year as a member of the strategy committee before chairing it.
Judgement in practice
01Putting the failure case on the first page of a land proposal
In 2018 I brought the board's strategy committee a proposal to buy land in Wuhan for what became Songhe Court, at RMB 1.1 billion for the land and about RMB 1.8 billion for construction. The usual practice was to lead with the projected return. I opened instead with the case in which the community was 55 per cent occupied after five years and long-dated yields had fallen by a percentage point, because that was the case in which the board would regret its decision. Two directors said the paper read as though I did not believe in the project. The committee approved the purchase but asked for construction in two phases, which proved prudent when building costs rose in 2021. On another board I would ask management for the scenario it least wants to discuss before the one it prefers, and I would treat a paper that offers only the second as unfinished.
02Applying the ordinary test to a shareholder's bank
One of the bank partnerships my 2024 review proposed to end belonged to a city commercial bank in which one of our shareholders holds a significant stake. That shareholder's director asked for an exemption. I recommended applying exactly the same test as for every other partner and sending the result to the board committee that reviews related-party transactions, so that neither keeping nor ending the relationship would look like a favour. The committee agreed. On the common criteria the bank's regular-premium sales were growing, it qualified as one of the two partners kept on probation, and it remains a partner. The director accepted the outcome more readily than he would have accepted a quiet exemption. I would ask any board to put shareholder-linked arrangements through the ordinary test first and the related-party review second, never the other way round.
03Pricing a care-administration tender to pay for its assessors
In 2021 a city in Hunan invited insurers to administer its public long-term-care insurance scheme: assessing applicants, managing payments to care providers and checking the care delivered. I recommended a service fee that covered the trained assessors the contract needed, about 40 per cent above the lowest bid we expected. Our head of health business argued that a foothold justified a loss for a few years. The city chose another insurer at a lower fee. Two years later it re-tendered after complaints about assessment delays and selected us in 2024 at a fee close to our original proposal. Directors are usually shown the revenue of a public contract and seldom its staffing. I would ask to see both, along with the price at which management would walk away.
My first year on a board
Before my first meeting I would ask for three documents: three years of strategy and risk committee papers with their minutes, the company's own map of where its earnings depend on weather, prices or a single large customer, and the capital plan with its assumptions. I would read them in that order. A board's past arguments tell a newcomer more about it than its current plan does, and the gaps between the three documents usually show where the next difficult decision will come from.
I would time my site visits to the company's calendar rather than to the board's. For an agribusiness that means a growing region at planting and again at harvest, and a processing site when intake is at its peak. I would meet the chief financial officer and the head of risk separately and ask each where they think the board's information is thinnest, and I would ask the company secretary for the previous year's board evaluation.
I would keep my requests small. In the first year I would ask for one change only, a page of unfavourable scenarios in every major investment paper, and leave anything else until I had seen a full annual cycle. At the end of the year I would ask the chair which of my questions had helped the board and which had merely added to management's workload, and I would adjust accordingly.
Conflicts and their management
Two approvals would come before any acceptance. Jiangheng's board must consent to any outside directorship I hold, and insurers in China apply their own rules to senior managers taking outside positions, so our compliance department would need to confirm the seat is permitted. I would rule out from the start any insurer, reinsurer, insurance intermediary, bank or asset manager; any company in which Jiangheng invests on a significant scale or with which it trades materially; any company connected to our shareholders, including Chuyuan Investment Group and its subsidiaries; and any elderly-care operator or health-service business, since Jiangheng partners with several and may compete with others.
Some conflicts would be less obvious. An agribusiness may buy crop insurance from insurers I once competed with, and its employees may hold policies with Jiangheng. I would disclose any insurance relationship with Jiangheng at the outset and take no part in the board's choice of insurers. What I know of Jiangheng's investment portfolio would stay inside Jiangheng; if the company I served became an investment candidate for Jiangheng, I would tell both chairs and leave the discussion on each side.
Time is the conflict most often underestimated. Jiangheng's planning season runs from September to December and its solvency reporting is quarterly. I would fix the board calendar for the year ahead before accepting, and I would step down rather than miss meetings regularly.
My independence statement
Whether I am independent of a particular company is a matter for its board, and where relevant its exchange, to decide under their own rules on the facts I put before them. Those facts would include my employment at Jiangheng Life, the deferred bonus I hold under Jiangheng's pay rules, my directorship of its elderly-care subsidiary, any insurance the company or its staff buy from Jiangheng and any investment Jiangheng holds in it. Where one of those relationships was significant, I would not ask to be treated as independent.
Board and committee exposure
Presented to the Board or a committee
Jiangheng Life Insurance Company Limited
Board strategy and investment committee: three-year plans, product strategy, elderly-care investments and capital raising
November 2019–present
Presents the three-year plan, the annual strategy review and every elderly-care investment proposal; attends as an executive, not a member, and holds no vote.
Reported to a committee
Jiangheng Life Insurance Company Limited
Board risk management committee: residence-right register, asset-liability scenarios and solvency projections
September 2023–present
Reports each quarter on the residence-right register and twice a year on rate scenarios and the capital plan, with the chief actuary and chief risk officer.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Jiangheng Life Insurance Company Limited
Board committee for related-party transactions: bank partnership with a shareholder-linked bank
2024
Presented the partner review as it applied to a city commercial bank in which a shareholder holds a significant stake, so that the committee could confirm the relationship met the same test as other partners.
Served as a director
Jiangheng Songhe Elderly Care Company Limited
Board of the wholly owned subsidiary that operates Songhe Court
March 2021–present
Director in an executive capacity; approves the subsidiary's budget, accounts, resident-safety reviews and operator contracts.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Lanbei Property and Casualty Insurance Company Limited
Board of directors: annual plan, reinsurance programme and catastrophe appetite
2009–2011
Presented the annual plan and reinsurance strategy as head of planning, including the aggregate stop-loss for the crop book and the 2010 catastrophe appetite statement.
Governance learning and readiness
IICA Independent Directors’ Databank: Not yet registered
The IICA Independent Directors' Databank is maintained for independent directors of Indian companies. I have no Indian seat in view, so I have not registered and have no plan to; the status shown is simply the only accurate one for a director outside India. For a mainland-listed company the relevant requirements are China's own rules on independent directors, including the training they expect, and for a Hong Kong company the exchange's listing rules.
- A training course for prospective independent directors of companies listed on mainland exchanges, completed in 2025
- Seven years of presenting to Jiangheng's board strategy and investment committee and three of reporting to its risk management committee
- Executive director of Jiangheng Songhe Elderly Care since 2021, including its annual accounts and resident-safety reviews
- A 2024 course on the financial statements of agricultural and food-processing companies, covering biological assets and commodity hedging
Committee contribution
Chair and member readiness| Capacity | Committees |
|---|
| Ready to chair | Strategy committee, once a full annual planning cycle has been completed as a member |
|---|
| Ready to join | Strategy committee · Risk management committee · Investment committee, where the board has one |
|---|
Capacity and preferences
- Time available
- 22 days per year
- Current directorships
- 1
- Sectors
- Agribusiness, seed and crop-protection companies · Grain, edible-oil and food processors · Agricultural machinery and irrigation equipment · Water utilities with long concessions
- Company type
- A company listed on a mainland exchange or in Hong Kong, outside financial services, whose earnings depend on weather, commodity prices or long-lived assets, and which has no insurance, investment or shareholder relationship of substance with Jiangheng Life
- Company stage
- A company preparing a long capital commitment, such as a new processing base, entry into a new growing region or a change of business model, where the board must weigh decades of exposure against a few years of results
The seat I am pursuing
I am pursuing one independent directorship at a company listed on a mainland exchange or in Hong Kong, with revenue of roughly RMB 5 billion to RMB 50 billion, whose results depend on harvests, water, weather or commodity prices: an agribusiness or seed company, a grain or edible-oil processor, an agricultural machinery maker or a water utility with long concessions. These companies commit capital for decades on assumptions about climate and prices that nobody can verify in advance, which is the kind of decision I have spent my career preparing.
I would like to serve on the strategy committee and on a risk or investment committee where the board has one, and after a year to chair the strategy committee if the board wishes. I would not take a seat whose attraction lay mainly in insurance contacts or introductions to Jiangheng, and I would hold no second outside directorship while I remain an executive. China's rules for independent directors of listed companies, revised by the securities regulator in 2023, limit how many such roles one person may hold and expect enough time for each; I intend to stay well within both.