Independent Director — Audit and Conduct (Asset Management)

A director who has seen a board outgrow itself

The right candidate has watched a board's composition fall behind the business it governs, and has helped put it right. In funds and asset management you have taken governance decisions where waiting cost real money, and you have acted on partial evidence with a decision built to be undone, firming it up as better facts came in. You have withheld funding from proposals that could not name their adopters or their downside, and afterwards rebuilt the governance capacity the work needed. That record was earned in organisations spanning eight countries, employing 700 or more people, with revenue of no less than $620 million.

Digital transformation, platform pivot and professionalisation are the experiences under examination, and each bears directly on succession: a board that oversees a platform business needs different skills from one that oversaw a product business. Governance ethics is needed at level 4, with level 3 sufficient for risk judgement, entity governance, and board and stakeholder management. A director who needs unanimous country-leader consent before challenging a commitment, or wants influence without twelve months of accountability, will not suit this board.

What you will oversee

The seat is oversight. Board succession is the main subject: you will help settle how succession decisions are made and what local leadership may decide alone, and test whether the board's make-up fits the work its portfolio requires. Audit and conduct give the other half of the remit. You will set the standard of proof directors use to oversee capital and controls, question whether commitments should keep going, pause or stop, particularly where cost or risk has no owner, and test value cases for adoption, operating dependencies and downside before approval. You will keep watch over who leads what and how matters reach the board, help settle disputes with operating leaders, and help agree how often directors review progress, exceptions and unresolved questions.

Succession is the most delicate of these. It touches the people in the room, including those who appointed you. Doing it well means agreeing the skills the board needs before discussing who has them, so that the conversation is about the work and not about individuals.

The year in sequence

The first ninety days should give the board an agreed skills matrix set against the work the portfolio requires, alongside its priorities for audit and conduct oversight. Around month nine, board succession plans should be reviewed against that matrix, and audit and conduct gaps tested with management. By month 12, board succession should be aligned with the portfolio's needs, and audit and conduct exceptions reviewed on an agreed board cadence.

Four stages before a seat at the table

Your first conversation, in the opening week, is in confidence and by video, with the Board Chair. The Regional President works through the remit with you in week three, and in week five you sit face to face with executives who lead the firm's functions. The seventh week brings you before the whole board. An answer on each stage follows within five working days.