NEDA CEO, Louis Cooper, writes a blog post for The Association of Corporate Treasurers (ACT) on the role of the Non-Executive Director.
The Non Executive Director (NED) role is typically defined by the key pillars of: governance + strategy + finance + risk. Finance and risk should be a NED’s specialist subjects and one that they are comfortable in providing insight and direction. In reality this is not always the case and some boards of directors may be organised on the basis of individual NEDs having ‘responsibility’ for certain areas of corporate activity, rather than being an expert in all of the key areas.
The day to day role of the NED is both challenging and critical, but only being part-time in the business it can be difficult to understand fully all of the issues and to feel an integral part of the organisation – if you just attend board meetings you can feel a bit of an outsider. NEDs do rely heavily on executive management to provide accurate and relevant information and there are examples where NEDs might feel that the information they receive is selective and watered down.
To read the rest of the article please go too: https://blogs.treasurers.org/the-role-of-a-non-executive-director/