How Rightmove cut board pack prep time with Board Intelligence's board portal

At a glance

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Carolyn Pollard, Group Company Secretary & Ruaridh Hook, Chief Financial Officer, Rightmove

The challenge

Finding a board portal that could keep pace with a FTSE 250 boardroom

Carolyn Pollard joined Rightmove as Group Company Secretary in September 2022, working alongside Assistant Company Secretary Michelle Palmer to run eight scheduled board meetings and ad-hoc meetings per year, and more than 60 board committee, operational and subsidiary board meetings per year. The board's expectations were high – for Ruaridh Hook, Chief Financial Officer, board effectiveness meant ensuring the board had the right information to make high-quality decisions. Finding a user friendly, innovative board portal that could enable this became a priority for Carolyn.

The approach

Bringing a trusted partner on board

After joining Rightmove, Carolyn ran a full review of the board portal market, but Board Intelligence was the winner, due to the pace of innovation and calibre of its customer service.

Ruaridh ran his own due diligence before backing the decision. Moving away from a legacy platform used for years wasn't something the business took lightly, so the team spoke to other company secretaries about their experience with Board Intelligence and tried the platform out themselves, finding it intuitive from the start. There was some concern about how to migrate years of historic board papers without causing mass disruption, but the switch was seamless, with historical materials available from day one.

Onboarding Rightmove was handled by a dedicated manager who supported the team through every stage of the process. Directors found it simple: some were already using Board Intelligence on other boards, making the switch seamless, while additional training and support was offered to those who were new to the platform.

Impact

Faster pack preparation, sharper decisions, and AI built into the process

Board pack preparation now takes roughly half the time it used to, according to Carolyn. "I estimate we spend half the time we used to preparing a board pack," she said, crediting the ease of use and speed of navigation. The platform supports Rightmove's full cycle of scheduled board and committee meetings as well as additional meetings, with permissions that can be adjusted down to individual papers when confidentiality is needed.

For Ruaridh, the value goes beyond time saved. "It's not just an efficiency tool – what it really helps drive is better decision-making." Rightmove has started using IQ Insights to support meeting preparation, surfacing the key points and risks in a paper. Ruaridh's team has found a further use for it too, using IQ Insights to review papers before they reach the board, to check the right level of detail has been drawn out and nothing important has been lost. Meanwhile, Carolyn has begun using Board Surveys for board evaluation and has been struck by how quickly she was able to put together the team's first questionnaire.

AI in the boardroom

AI is a constant presence in Rightmove's boardroom. "AI is the topic of debate in almost every single meeting," Ruaridh said. "It's the forefront of everything that we're doing at the moment." As a technology business, he sees the board as more engaged with AI than most, not only in how the company itself uses it, but in how customers, consumers, and employees are engaging with it too. For Ruaridh, that means treating AI as both an opportunity and a responsibility: "We see it as a huge opportunity but also having to navigate the risk profile that comes with that." Rather than the board making individual AI decisions itself, the focus is on making sure the right frameworks are in place so that good decisions get made "at a day-to-day level across the organisation."

Board Intelligence's own use of AI sits within that wider context. "What we've really seen is Board Intelligence absolutely leading in the AI space," Ruaridh said. "There's lots out there that try and do many things, and what we've really seen through our relationship with Board Intelligence is that they actually deliver on those promises."

Beyond the platform itself, the relationship has changed how the business frames the investment, seeing it not as an administrative cost but as a driver of board effectiveness and decision quality.

Both Carolyn and Ruaridh also pointed to the wider Board Intelligence community as a source of value from early on. "There's the added benefit of an entire community of other company secretaries and governance professionals," Carolyn said. "There are webinars, seminars, and conferences where you can network and share information and best practice." Ruaridh found the same held true from a CFO's perspective, describing how Board Intelligence "linked us up with connections and events, opening doors to people facing the same challenges as us. That was a fantastic benefit we didn't expect when we first joined."

Why this matters

For a fast-moving, technology-led business like Rightmove, AI is now a standing item in almost every board discussion, and the leadership team's job is to weigh its opportunities against its risks, with the right information and the right frameworks in place.

Rightmove's experience also shows how smooth an onboarding process can be. A dedicated onboarding manager, a clean migration of historic materials, and directors who found the portal intuitive from day one meant the switch to Board Intelligence felt seamless, while giving the business a partner it saw as a genuine leader in AI for the boardroom.