Board Intelligence

Middle East boards are the most confident of any region about the value they add. Board Intelligence's third Board Value Index found that 42% see their board as an essential tool for value creation, the highest of any region surveyed, and 62% spend most of their meeting time looking forward rather than back. Sheikh Fahim Al Qasimi, Executive Chairman of Sharjah's Department of Government Relations, told us why that confidence runs so high in the Gulf specifically. "The advantage that businesses in the Gulf have is that long-term thinking is set by the public sector." Read the full report to see how each region compares on long-term thinking, via the link in the first comment.

Sir Jan du Plessis will join our first ever Governance Summit. He has chaired BT Group, Rio Tinto, SABMiller, RHM and British American Tobacco over an eighteen year span, and served as a non-executive director of Marks & Spencer and Lloyds Banking Group. Before that, he was CFO of Richemont for sixteen years. He was knighted in 2022 for services to telecommunications and business. He currently serves as Chair of the Financial Reporting Council, a role he steps down from at the end of September 2026. At the Governance Summit, he will sit down with Oliver Shah for a fireside chat, followed by questions from the floor. Expect a conversation shaped by two decades in the chair, across industries from telecoms to tobacco to mining.

Board materials are among the most sensitive documents in any organisation. IQ Experts is ISO 27001 certified and SOC 2 ready. It runs on zero data retention, with no persistent store, so there is nothing to replay and nothing to expose. Data is never used to train our models. Permissions are role-based, so each director sees only what they're meant to see, and director-level conversations stay private, even from administrators. Find out more about IQ Experts via the link in the first comment.

Board Intelligence heads to the GPRC Summit 2026 in Dubai this August. H.E. Raja Al Mazrouei, Advisory Board Member at Board Intelligence and CEO of Etihad Credit Insurance (ECI), will be speaking on day one. Sally Yousif and Vanshika Ahuja Kapoor will be representing Board Intelligence on the ground, meeting board leaders and governance professionals from across the region and sharing the latest Board Value Index findings. Find the team at Sofitel Dubai The Obelisk on 26 and 27 August to learn more about IQ Experts.

Board Intelligence brought governance and cyber security leaders together to talk through agentic AI in the boardroom. Eddie Lamb (Hiscox), Ted Cowell (S-RM), and Jonathan Knight joined the conversation, chaired by Anna Scholes. Alex MacMillan breaks down what they discussed below.

Kim Crawford Goodman, CEO of Smarsh, will join our first ever Governance Summit on 30 September. Smarsh is the global leader in AI powered communications compliance, serving 18 of the world's top 20 banks. Kim sits on the board of Charter Communications, and her executive career spans finance, technology and payments, from Worldpay and Fiserv to American Express, Dell Technologies and Bain & Company. At our Governance Summit, Goodman will sit down with Oliver Shah for a fireside chat. We'll be sharing more on both the session and the summit in the coming weeks.

"Very few board directors have led commercial development or built something from scratch, and those are the skills we need to have a forward-looking conversation." Board Intelligence's third Board Value Index surveyed 400+ directors, CEOs, and CFOs across four regions. 78% say a lack of skills or subject matter expertise on the board caused at least one delayed, rushed, or poor decision in the past six months. Jerry Loy, NED at Afin Bank, Redwood Bank, and Union Bank of India, contributed to this year's report. Download the report via the link in the first comment.

Board Intelligence's third Board Value Index found that 58% of Middle East boards are actively reviewing AI's role in decision-making, the highest rate of any region surveyed. The region also leads on innovation more broadly, with 86% of directors saying their board enables it. H.E. Raja Al Mazrouei, Advisory Board Member at Board Intelligence, was interviewed for this year's report on what boards need to keep that pace. "The boards of the future will need to be more digitally literate, more diverse, data-informed, and more comfortable operating in ambiguity." Download the report via the link in the first comment.

The Rt Hon Rory Stewart OBE will open our first ever Governance Summit. Stewart has served as UK Secretary of State for International Development, Minister for Africa and Minister for Prisons, and now teaches grand strategy at Yale's Jackson School of Global Affairs. He co-hosts The Rest Is Politics, where he and Alastair Campbell debate current affairs from across the political divide. At our Governance Summit, he'll be in conversation with our CEO Pippa Begg, followed by questions from the floor. We'll be sharing more on both the session and the summit in the coming weeks.

Only 49% of directors say their board has moved from discussing AI to acting on it, according to Board Intelligence's Board Value Index. Dr Scarlett Brown, Senior Board Advisor at Board Intelligence, and Paul Stark, Enterprise Sales at Board Intelligence and a founding member of the AI in Corporate Governance Industry Forum, are running a session for governance teams ready to close that gap. On 19 August, they'll cover the AI use cases delivering the most value for governance teams right now, the questions to ask vendors during procurement, and how to bring AI-cautious stakeholders on board. Register via the link in the first comment.