Effective board reporting: CGI and Board Intelligence publish updated guidance

There's only ever one person in a Formula 1 car, but no driver wins a Grand Prix on their own. Behind every champion is a team sitting on the pit wall, reading data streams spanning everything from fuel load and weather conditions to tyre temperature. Their job is to distil all of it into the few insights the driver needs, delivered at the precise moment they're needed.

Boards work the same way. Directors bring experience and critical thinking to the table, but to exercise their judgement effectively, they need the right information, framed clearly, at the right time.

Governance professionals are the bridge between the two, but their task isn't an easy one. That's why, in 2018, Board Intelligence and the Chartered Governance Institute UK & Ireland (CGI) published guidance on effective board reporting. The aim was to codify, for the first time, what high-quality board information looks like and to help governance professionals put it into practice.

Eight years on, Board Intelligence and the CGI have updated it. The new guidance draws on data from 1,857 governance professionals and directors across 1,676 organisations, plus roundtables with CGI members, to explore what's changed, what hasn't, and where board reporting is heading.

In this blog, we summarise what we've learned, the key changes we've made to the guidance, and how to put it into practice.

Since 2018, the environment that boards, governance teams, and businesses operate in has become more volatile, scrutinised, and complex. The volume of information that boards must engage with has expanded accordingly. Since 2019, the total annual cost of board reporting has grown by 177%, to £2.8 million a year for the average organisation. Board packs have expanded by 27%, to 220 pages on average, and board and committee meetings are up 34%.

Directors pay a price for this volume of information. As Pippa Begg, co-founder and CEO of Board Intelligence, puts it: "More data has not made boards better informed. Too often it buries the signal that matters under everything that might."

In 2025, 62% of directors and governance professionals rated their board packs "weak" or "poor" — broadly in line with data on board reporting from earlier years. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of respondents are not confident their pack is being fully read before meetings, and 42% say their materials are actively limiting board effectiveness. Over half (54%) say they struggle to find key messages in the board pack and 47% think their board papers don't share enough on the implications of the information presented.

The causes are structural, not a lack of effort. Often, they stem from a poor understanding of the board's needs and priorities. Faced with more scrutiny, a rising tide of regulation, and the ability to measure almost anything, management include everything they think might be required by the board, just in case. One roundtable participant called it "saturation bombing". The result is boards end up with more information and less clarity.

Board reporting is not one size fits all, and what works for a FTSE 100 board may not suit a charity or a building society. However, there are some enduring principles that define what a good board paper looks like, regardless of an organisation's size, scale, or sector.

Across all environments, high-quality board papers demonstrate three qualities:

• A rigorous focus on what matters most
• Critical thinking that surfaces actionable insight
• Effective communication that enables the board to decide and act

Board Intelligence's Question-Driven Insight Principle (QDI), a methodology for writing high-impact board papers, is designed to deliver these three qualities.

In practice, report writers should lead with the "so what" to ensure the report delivers insight, rather than information for information's sake. A good executive summary is key. It sets out why a paper matters, the key insights it contains, and what the board is being asked to do.

To deliver effective board materials for every board meeting, you need an effective board reporting system. A single high-quality paper is not enough. Nor is it right to rely on a governance team toiling late into the night.

The encouraging news is that the right support makes a difference. Clear briefs, topic-specific templates, and structured feedback all lift paper quality. Briefing matters most: only 14% of directors rate their packs "good" or "excellent" when writers start writing without a clear brief, compared with 49% when they do. The lesson is to build the habits that make quality repeatable, rather than relying on last-minute heroics.

This is where Board Intelligence can help. Our AI report-writing tool, Report Writer, has been designed to help management draft papers grounded in the principles of good reporting — turning notes into best-practice drafts in seconds. Our advisory team supports governance professionals to simplify and transform board reporting, for example by designing information flows and providing practical, interactive report writing training workshops to give management teams the tools and confidence to craft clear, high-quality board reports.