Audit chairs strive to adopt effective practices for running their committees and are interested in discovering new tools for evaluating board members. At the same time, the geopolitical environment is creating a number of new risks for audit…
Board and committee effectiveness
Competitive pressures are driving insurers to seek the greatest possible advantage from the large amounts of data at their disposal. At the same time, security and privacy concerns are limiting their ability to do so. Regulation and customer…
Innovation and technology, Regulation and supervision, Risk management and oversight / Insurance and Asset Management
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) plays a critical role in the regulation of US public companies, helping to shape the way that firms and their leaders communicate with their investors and the broader public. On November 29, 2018, Lead…
Corporate and board regulatory matters, Investor perspectives on public companies
“Things are changing faster than we can keep up.”
—Summit participant
Talk of disruption in financial services has been common for many years. Bill Gates famously proclaimed in 1994 that “banks are dinosaurs … we can bypass them.” In the years…
Innovation and technology, Financial Strategy / Banking, Innovation and technology, Financial Strategy / Insurance and Asset Management
Recent accounting controversies in the United Kingdom (UK) have brought the audit profession into the limelight, prompting calls for greater scrutiny and actions that could change the way the profession works. If past debates on audit and financial…
Accounting and financial reporting, Corporate and board regulatory matters
Compensation committees are not impervious to the pressure on corporate boards to address new topics or novel approaches to longstanding issues. The increasing urgency to achieve gender equity—including but not limited to pay equity—has changed the…
Executive Compensation
Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), the largest and most influential proxy advisory firm, has recently taken an increased interest in the role of external auditors and the audit committee. This is an important development because many…
Accounting and financial reporting
As Aviki et al. recently noted in a systematic review of alternative payment models (APMs) in oncology, despite the growing number of such models, “there is limited evidence to evaluate their efficacy.” Indeed, we do not yet understand these models…
New payment models / Healthcare
Over the last year, there has been a steady drumbeat of allegations of workplace sexual misconduct against dozens of prominent figures from media, politics, and business. A wide range of companies have seen top executives resign in the face of such…
Board risk oversight
The dramatic shifts in the investment landscape—from individual to institutional shareholders and from actively managed funds to indices—have put pressure on boards to strengthen governance and oversight practices.
On July 19, Lead Director Network…
Investor perspectives on public companies