27 things every board must evidence by 1 January 2026
A working document for company secretaries, board chairs and governance officers preparing for the first annual evaluation cycle under King V. Print it. Walk it into your next meeting. Score it honestly.
This checklist is structured around the four shifts that matter most under King V - the 13 principles, the Disclosure Framework, the evaluation cycle itself, and the new emphasis on AI governance. Each item is a question your board should be able to answer with evidence, not intent.
Work through each item with your governance team. Score honestly. The point of this document is not to score well; it is to find the gaps before your auditors, regulators or the public do.
Most boards score below 60% on first pass. That is normal. King V meaningfully raises the bar; the work is to close the gap before publication, not before scoring this checklist.
A total readiness score and interpretation appears on page 8.
For each principle, can your board produce disclosure-grade evidence of the outcomes it has achieved?
Can the board evidence ethical decision-making across the past 12 months, including documented instances where the ethical lens shaped a material decision?
Is there a current, board-approved code of ethics; a confirmed annual declaration of interest from every director; and a register of conflicts handled in the past year?
Can the board demonstrate how its citizenship commitments - environmental, social, economic - have produced measurable outcomes, not just policies?
Did the board approve a strategy in the last 24 months, and has it formally tested progress against that strategy in the current cycle?
Are your integrated, sustainability and governance reports demonstrably aligned and free of contradiction across the three documents?
Is there a current board charter that defines role, scope and reserved powers - and has the board evaluated itself against it in the last 12 months?
Is there a current skills matrix, an independence determination for each non-executive director, and a documented succession plan?
Does each board committee have a current terms of reference, an annual workplan, and a formal effectiveness evaluation in the last 12 months?
Has the board conducted a formal evaluation in the past 12 months covering: board-as-a-whole, individual directors, the CEO, and each committee - with documented findings and an action plan?
Are the CEO and Company Secretary appointments documented with clear terms, performance contracts, and an annual evaluation?
Does the board oversee a current risk register that explicitly includes AI, technology and cyber risks, with assigned ownership and a quarterly review cadence?
Can the board name its material stakeholder groups and produce evidence of engagement with each in the past 12 months?
Is there a remuneration policy that has passed shareholder advisory vote, with a remuneration report that addresses pay equity and links pay to King V outcomes?
BoardEvaluator™ maps directly to each of these 13 principles. See the full principle-by-module mapping at celagenix.com/king-v.
Five publication requirements that boards most frequently underestimate.
To claim application of King V, your disclosures must now be publicly available against a standardised framework. The five items below are the ones that determine whether your application is defensible in public.
Will your King V disclosures be published on a publicly accessible channel - annual report, integrated report, or dedicated governance page on your website - within the reporting cycle?
Can you produce a discrete, evidenced outcome statement for each of the 13 principles - not just a policy reference?
Where the board has scaled or declined a recommended practice, is there a documented and publishable justification grounded in proportionality?
Does your sustainability disclosure address both how sustainability matters affect the organisation and how the organisation affects society and the environment?
Is there a documented sign-off chain - secretariat, executive, board - for King V disclosure content prior to publication?
Five process tests for the cycle that produces all your other evidence.
Principle 9 mandates evaluation; the rest of the Code presumes that evaluation produces the evidence. These five items test the process - not just the existence - of your evaluation cycle.
Is the next evaluation cycle scoped, dated, and aligned to your King V application context, sector and board structure?
Does your evaluation combine structured quantitative scoring with confidential qualitative interview, or does it rely on a single survey instrument?
Is the evaluation conducted with sufficient independence and confidentiality that directors will speak honestly - including about each other and the chair?
Will the evaluation produce a documented action plan with owners, timelines and the next-cycle measurement point?
Will the evaluation produce per-principle disclosure outputs in a publishable format - or will those have to be reconstructed by the secretariat after the fact?
The four oversight competencies King V now expects directors to evidence.
King V brings AI governance squarely into the boardroom. The four items below are the minimum competency the new Code expects directors to evidence - and the area where, across more than 3,000 evaluations in 17 countries, we see the largest readiness gap.
Is AI named as a specific category in your risk register - distinct from 'technology' or 'cyber' - with assigned executive ownership?
Does the board receive a current inventory of material use-cases across the organisation, including those involving customer or employee data?
Is there a board-approved AI policy that addresses ethical use, model risk, third-party AI procurement, and human oversight?
Does the board itself have - or has it documented a plan to acquire - sufficient AI literacy to oversee AI risk meaningfully?
The AI Governance Status Assessment module in BoardEvaluator™ tests all four of these in a single 45-minute board exercise.
Count your scores across all 27 items:
You have evidence-grade governance. Use 2026 to refine, not rebuild.
The foundations are there. Targeted gap-closing over the next two quarters will get you over the line.
You have practices but not evidence. A structured readiness sprint is needed before the 2026 cycle begins.
Your current methodology will not survive King V scrutiny. Begin readiness work immediately.
Most boards score in the Substantially Ready or Materially Exposed band on first pass. That is normal. King V meaningfully raises the bar; the work is to close the gap before publication, not before scoring this checklist.
If you scored in the Substantially Ready or Materially Exposed band - and most boards do - a focused 90-day sprint will move you decisively forward. Below is the cadence we run with clients.
This sprint is delivered end-to-end on BoardEvaluator™, with Celagenix governance advisors leading the qualitative and disclosure work.
Across more than 3,000 evaluations in 17 countries, four gaps account for roughly 80% of the King V readiness shortfall we encounter. If your score landed in the Materially Exposed band, expect at least three of these to apply.
Boards have charters, codes and policies in abundance - but cannot produce the outcomes those documents are supposed to have generated. King V is outcomes-based. Documents are not enough.
Most boards run a quantitative survey and call it an evaluation. King V's bar is higher - dynamics, dissent and decision quality are not survey-able.
AI risk is treated as an IT or cyber matter. Under King V it is a board obligation.
The Company Secretary reconstructs disclosure content from the evaluation report after the fact, losing fidelity and adding weeks.
Celagenix® is a specialist sustainability and corporate governance consultancy established in 2014, with offices in Sandton and Gaborone and a forthcoming presence in Windhoek. We work with boards in 17 countries - listed entities, state-owned enterprises, pension funds, financial services, mining, retail and health - to convert governance from a compliance function into a strategic asset.
Celagenix Academy is the group's training and learning arm, producing scored self-assessments, tools and resources like this one. BoardEvaluator™ is our flagship product: the intelligent board evaluation platform, purpose-built for King V and the AI era. It combines 18+ evaluation modules, qualitative advisory and disclosure-ready outputs in a single AWS-hosted environment used by more than 100 organisations to date.
"Where human intelligence and technology converge."