Transformation Delivery for Financial Services

A Practitioner's Course

Session Two

Governance and Sponsorship

The difference between active and nominal sponsorship, the most common governance failures, and what boards need to understand about overseeing uncertain work

Disclaimer This course is provided for general information and education only. It is not legal advice. Legislation, rules and regulatory guidance change, sometimes quickly. Readers should confirm the current position and obtain jurisdiction-specific professional advice where needed. The views and experience expressed are Russel Fielding's own and do not represent any employer or client organisation.

Session Two: Governance and Sponsorship

The most consistent failure I see in large programme delivery is weak executive sponsorship. Not absent sponsorship. Most large programmes have a named sponsor. The problem is sponsorship that is nominal rather than active.

Who this session is for. This session is for executive sponsors, board members, programme directors, and PMO leads responsible for designing or sitting on programme governance.

Active versus nominal sponsorship

Active sponsorship means understanding a programme well enough to make informed decisions when it hits an obstacle. It means being visible to the programme team and the wider organisation as a genuine champion of the work. It also means removing blockers the programme manager cannot remove: decisions that need executive authority, resources that need reallocating, and conflicts between business units that need resolving at a senior level.

Nominal sponsorship means attending the monthly governance meeting, receiving the status report, and assuming everything is on track if the status is green. It means treating the programme as the programme manager's problem rather than the sponsor's accountability. When the programme runs into the inevitable difficulty, and all large transformation programmes do, the executive response is reactive rather than informed.

Good sponsors make decisions promptly. Every deferred decision has a cost: momentum lost, planning assumptions undermined, and a signal sent to the programme team that the executive tier is not genuinely engaged. They are visible, appearing at the moments that matter rather than only at governance meetings, because transformation requires organisational change, and organisational change requires visible leadership. And they protect the programme from the wrong kind of interference: the senior leader who is not a sponsor but who redirects resources, changes priorities, or makes commitments that affect scope.

The business case as a living document

One of the most common sponsorship failures is treating the business case as a document produced to secure approval, rather than as a management tool used throughout delivery. When scope changes are proposed or timelines revised, the business case is the lens through which those decisions should be assessed: does this change still deliver the value that was committed to, and has the risk profile changed in a way that alters the original decision to proceed.

Sponsors who are not engaged with the business case as a living reference point make decisions without that context. They approve scope changes that quietly undermine the benefits the programme was built to deliver, and accept timeline extensions without asking whether the programme still makes economic sense.

The most common governance failures

Governance designed for reporting, not decision-making

Steering committees meet, receive updates, and note the status, while the decisions the programme actually needs are deferred, escalated elsewhere, or left unresolved. The purpose of a programme board is to make decisions, not to receive presentations. Where the decisions being made at governance forums are trivial and the important ones are avoided, the structure needs to be redesigned.

The wrong people in the room

Large transformation touches technology, operations, risk, compliance, finance, and the business units. When a single function dominates the steering committee, or key stakeholders are absent from decisions that affect them, the consequences appear downstream as misalignment, rework, and resistance.

Diffuse accountability

Everyone is responsible, which in practice means nobody is. The business case sits with one function, the programme with another, the benefits with a third, and the programme manager reports into a structure with no authority over any of them. Accountability for the business case and the benefits should rest with the person who has authority over scope and resourcing. Where those are separated, governance struggles.

Decisions made too slowly

In a fast-moving regulatory environment, the cost of delay is not just lost time. It is the risk of missing a deadline or letting a fixable problem become unfixable. Decisions should be made at the lowest level at which they can properly be made, and escalated only when genuinely necessary. A programme manager who takes every resourcing decision to a steering committee is not being governed. They are being managed by committee.

What good governance looks like

Good governance has a clear structure, defined membership, and a genuine decision-making mandate rather than an advisory one. In my experience, the most effective programme boards are usually small enough to decide rather than large enough to represent every interested party. A monthly cadence for strategic oversight, with the ability to convene ad hoc for significant decisions, suits most large programmes. If meetings are too infrequent, decisions wait weeks. If they are too frequent, the meetings become routine rather than purposeful.

A good programme board pack gives members what they need to decide: the status of key workstreams against plan, the risks requiring attention, the decisions being sought, and an honest assessment of where the programme is genuinely struggling. A later session returns to this last point in detail, because it is where most governance packs quietly fail.

What the board needs to understand

Boards are expected to provide meaningful oversight of transformation programmes, not just receive updates. Personal accountability regimes in each jurisdiction reinforce that expectation.

The first thing a board needs to understand is that transformation is inherently uncertain. Unlike an operational process managed against a stable benchmark, transformation involves doing something that has not been done before in this organisation, with these systems and these people. The plan will change and new risks will emerge. That is not a sign of failure. What the board should be asking is not whether the plan is being followed, but whether the team is learning effectively and adapting appropriately.

The second is the difference between outputs and outcomes. A programme can deliver every milestone on time and still fail to produce the business value it was designed to create. Boards should ask about benefits realisation from the outset, not only at closure.

The third is the importance of genuine risk conversations. A status marked green often means the programme manager believes they can recover from current issues, not that everything is on track. Boards that only receive curated updates are not getting what they need to provide meaningful oversight.

Jurisdiction equivalents

Governance expectations are shaped by the personal accountability regime that applies in each jurisdiction, which changes how seriously boards are compelled to take sponsorship.

New Zealand

New Zealand relies on director duties, licensing conditions, and governance obligations under the financial institution conduct regime, rather than a direct SM&CR equivalent. Under section 446J of the Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013, every financial institution must establish, implement and maintain an effective fair conduct programme. The Financial Markets Authority expects an applicant's fair conduct programme to have been established, including board approval, when the applicant applies for a financial institution licence.

Australia

Under the Financial Accountability Regime, enhanced accountable entities must maintain accountability statements and accountability maps that describe accountability as it operates in practice. Those documents are intended to make responsibility clear, including where accountability is shared or subject to limitations. That makes diffuse accountability, the governance failure described above, a more direct compliance risk in Australia than in a jurisdiction without an equivalent regime.

Key takeaways from Session Two Active sponsorship is a leading predictor of programme success. A sponsor who signed the business case and disappeared is not active. A sponsor who understands the critical path, makes decisions promptly, and is visible to the team is. The business case is a management tool, not a filing exercise. Scope and timeline decisions should be tested against it throughout delivery, not only at approval. Governance fails in recognisable patterns. Reporting rather than deciding, the wrong people in the room, diffuse accountability, and decisions made too slowly are the most consistent causes. Good governance is sized to decide. Five to eight members, a genuine decision-making mandate, and a cadence that matches the pace of the work. Boards should expect uncertainty, not the absence of it. The right question is whether the team is learning and adapting, not whether the original plan is being followed exactly.

Coming up in Session Three

Session Three covers what makes regulatory change delivery different from discretionary transformation: the fixed and externally imposed deadline, the scope defined by someone else, and the personal accountability that follows when it goes wrong. Continue to Session Three.

Further reading and resources

Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, sections 66A and 66B. The Duty of Responsibility underpinning UK senior manager accountability for governance failures in their area. Available at legislation.gov.uk.

Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013, section 446J. Minimum requirements for a fair conduct programme, including board approval before licensing. Available at legislation.govt.nz.

Financial Accountability Regime, accountability statements and maps. Guidance on accountable persons and accountability mapping obligations, jointly published by APRA and ASIC. Available at apra.gov.au and asic.gov.au.

Delivering Transformation in Financial Services. The published Ārai Tika guide this session draws on, with a fuller treatment of sponsorship, the business case, and board oversight. Available at araitika.com.