The FBC fund board effectiveness barometer is a series of in-depth surveys and focus groups designed to provide a valuable source of peer insight into the key aspects of fund board effectiveness. Over the course of the year, we will be examining topics including Fund Board Purpose, Culture and Behaviours, Structure and Composition, Board Process and Assurance and Monitoring.
These surveys will canvass views from executive and independent directors in the UK and across Europe, drawing on their experiences at the sharp end of fund board governance to explore examples of good practice in the industry. The survey results, ‘the barometer’, and accompanying analysis, will be available to FBC corporate members in a series of member meetings and detailed reports, as part of the corporate membership of FBC.
Contact us for more information about FBC’s research.
At the start of 2022, Fund Boards Council (FBC) convened a group of fund board directors as part of our Fund Board Effectiveness programme. The discussion quickly turned to the role and purpose of the fund board, the increasingly wide-ranging areas its directors are overseeing and how well understood its remit is elsewhere in asset management firms.
There was some concern that the fund board’s overall role and purpose is not always as clearly understood within the wider firm as it should be, particularly given the regulator’s very clear view on the ‘primacy’ of the fund board. Moreover, this lack of understanding or lower levels of engagement with the board is impacting on directors in a variety of ways as they discharge their governance duties.
The FBC Fund Board Effectiveness Barometer questioned fund board directors across FBC’s corporate member firms and this was followed by an FBC members meeting, providing additional insights and examples of good practice included in this report. The full report also includes a framework of questions for fund boards to consider in the context of their own governance aims and priorities.
If you are interested in finding out more about FBC’s work on Fund Board Purpose, please get in touch at contact@fundboards.org
Excerpts of the report are available here.
The full report is available for FBC members in the Member Portal.
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