Board & Governance
Board Succession Trends
How boards are sequencing non-executive succession, and where committee capability gaps are appearing first.
All insights
Board tenure is compressing. Nomination committees that once refreshed on a nine-year cycle are now planning in three-year horizons, largely because committee-level capability requirements are changing faster than board composition.
Audit and risk chairs remain the scarcest population, followed by directors with genuine technology or cyber governance experience rather than a general interest in the subject.
The report covers how boards define skills matrices, how they test them, and how far in advance a search should begin to avoid an interim appointment.
What the report finds
- Audit chair searches take longer than any other board appointment we run.
- Skills matrices are widely used but rarely tested against a real external benchmark population.
- Succession conversations now begin around two years earlier than they did five years ago.
- First-time NED appointments are rising where the skills gap is technical rather than commercial.
Coverage
Non-executive and committee appointmentsListed and regulated businessesUnited Kingdom, Europe, Middle East