“Board Intelligence have delivered clarity on what ‘good’ looks like in reporting.”
The Challenge
The Royal Bank of Scotland had a strategic goal to ‘simplify’ the bank and it was critical that its board and committee reports were exemplars of this. Furthermore, with the added scrutiny from the Senior Managers Regime, there was a drive to deliver consistently high quality papers which cover the information board and committee members need to be able to discharge their duties.
Board Intelligence was asked to support the bank’s Corporate Governance and Secretariat team to embed a consistent approach to board and committee reporting that:
- Helps authors write reports which focus on what the board and committees need to know;
- Develops clearer, more succinct reports which enable the board and committees to see what matters and which stimulate effective boardroom conversations.
The Solution
We used a three-phase approach to develop RBS’s board and committee reporting:
- We worked with the Corporate Governance and Secretariat team to implement our suite of report templates, to focus report authors on the questions on the mind of the board and committees, and to support the preparation of concise and consistent papers.
- We then rolled out an enterprise-wide training programme, designed to upskill authors and to embed the principles of our best practice reporting techniques throughout the organisation.
- Finally, we worked with specific teams to develop the scope of the bank’s management information and to streamline the quantity of data to produce more insightful and clearly structured papers for the board and committees.
The Outcome
Our work helped RBS deliver shorter, pithier and more insightful reports, providing greater clarity across the business.
Report authors are equipped with the skills to write great papers in fewer drafts, saving management time. And the report templates have made it easier to fulfil the requirements of the Senior Managers Regime, guiding authors on what to include in their papers and giving the board and committees confidence they are fulfilling their duties.
It is now easier for RBS’s board and committees to digest their reports, focus on the key issues and use their time in the boardroom to best effect.
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