Hiring independent directors: governance is the job description
Board searches are not executive searches with older candidates. The competency is different in kind.
With RBI, MAS and ASIC all tightening governance expectations, board composition in financial services has become a genuine talent problem: too few independent directors with real domain depth, too many boards recycling the same twenty names. The search needs a different lens.
What boards actually need
- Domain expertise the executive team cannot supply: risk, technology, audit, the regulator's perspective
- Independence in fact, not just on paper - people who will say the difficult thing in a polite room
- Time: a directorship done properly is a real commitment; capacity is a screening criterion
Where to look beyond the usual circuit
Recently retired regulators and central bankers, second-career executives from adjacent financial institutions, senior partners from audit and law with sector focus, and operators from other markets facing the same regulatory cycle. The pool widens dramatically once "must have been a bank CEO" is retired as the filter.
Assess for the boardroom, not the interview
The question is not "were they successful" but "how do they operate in a group that must decide." Probe their committee history: when did they dissent, what did they change, how do they handle a management team that out-prepares them? Governance is a skill; hire for it specifically.