Drafting the Board Pack With AI

The board pack — the collection of financial and other information prepared for the board — is an important and often time-consuming deliverable of the finance function, and one where AI can genuinely help with the drafting, particularly the narrative and explanatory elements. AI can assist in drafting parts of the board pack — the commentary, the summaries, the explanations — capturing a time saving on a task that involves considerable writing. But the board pack is a high-stakes deliverable, presenting the financial position and performance to the board for their governance and decisions, which means it must be accurate, appropriate, and sound, and AI’s assistance must be used carefully with the finance professional ensuring the board pack meets the standard the board requires. This guide addresses drafting the board pack with AI, capturing the value while ensuring the board pack is accurate and appropriate.

This guide is written for finance professionals looking to use AI to help draft the board pack. It covers where AI can help with the board pack, why the board pack’s high stakes require care, how to use AI well for the drafting, the finance professional’s essential role in ensuring the board pack is sound, and how to approach using AI for the board pack sensibly. It builds on the general board pack preparation discipline covered in our guide on board pack preparation, with a focus on using AI for the drafting. The aim is a practical understanding of how AI can help draft the board pack, capturing the time saving while ensuring the board pack is accurate, appropriate, and sound — which is essential given its importance to the board’s governance.

Where AI Can Help With the Board Pack

AI can genuinely help with the parts of the board pack that involve writing and suit its capabilities, and understanding these shows the value. AI can help with the narrative and commentary in the board pack — the written explanations of the results, the commentary on performance, the narrative around the numbers — which involve considerable writing and suit AI’s strength with text, providing first drafts the finance professional then refines and verifies. AI can help with summarising — producing summaries of the results, the position, or particular matters for the board — as a starting point. And AI can assist with explaining — articulating explanations of matters for the board — in clear prose.

AI can also help with drafting the more routine, recurring narrative elements of the board pack that follow a consistent pattern month to month, producing them in the established style and format for the finance professional to refine. In these ways — the narrative and commentary, the summarising, the explaining, the routine recurring elements — AI can genuinely help with the drafting of the board pack, capturing a time saving on the considerable writing the board pack involves. A finance professional who uses AI for these drafting tasks, then refines and verifies the output, can save time on preparing the board pack. Understanding where AI can help with the board pack — the narrative, the summarising, the explaining, the routine elements — helps a finance professional capture the value by using AI for the writing-based parts of the board pack. The help is real for the drafting of the narrative and explanatory elements, and capturing it is where a finance professional saves time on the board pack with AI.

Why the Board Pack’s High Stakes Require Care

The board pack is a high-stakes deliverable, and its stakes require care in using AI for it, which a finance professional must appreciate. The board pack presents the financial position and performance to the board — the body responsible for governing the business — for their oversight and their decisions, which means the board pack informs the governance of the business at the highest level. Because the board relies on the board pack for their oversight and decisions, the board pack must be accurate, appropriate, and sound — errors, inappropriate content, or unsound material in the board pack could mislead the board and impair their governance, with potentially serious consequences.

This high-stakes nature means that using AI for the board pack must not compromise its accuracy, appropriateness, or soundness. Because AI can produce confident but wrong output, and because the board pack must be accurate and appropriate, anything AI contributes to the board pack must be carefully verified and ensured appropriate by the finance professional, not trusted uncritically. The board pack’s importance to the board’s governance means its integrity cannot be compromised by careless reliance on AI. Understanding why the board pack’s high stakes require care — because the board relies on it for governance and it must be accurate, appropriate, and sound — is essential to using AI for the board pack safely. The high stakes mean AI’s assistance must be used carefully, with the finance professional ensuring the board pack meets the standard the board requires, and understanding this is key to using AI for the board pack without compromising it.

How to Use AI Well for the Drafting

Using AI well for drafting the board pack means using it to assist with the writing while the finance professional ensures the board pack is accurate, appropriate, and sound. The effective approach is for the finance professional to use AI to draft the narrative, commentary, and explanatory elements — capturing the time saving on the writing — while providing or verifying the substance, so that the drafted content accurately and appropriately reflects the actual position and performance. The finance professional ensures the substance is genuine and the presentation appropriate, using AI to help with the writing but not to determine the substance or to produce content that goes to the board unverified.

This means giving AI the genuine information and context for the narrative and explanations, using it to articulate them clearly, and then refining and verifying the drafted content — ensuring it is accurate, appropriate for the board, and sound — before it goes into the board pack. The finance professional must be particularly careful to verify anything factual or consequential, and to ensure the content is appropriate for the board, given the board pack’s high stakes. Using AI well for the drafting therefore means AI assists with the writing, the finance professional supplies or verifies the substance, and the finance professional refines and verifies the content to the standard the board pack requires. Understanding how to use AI well for the drafting — AI assists, the finance professional ensures accuracy, appropriateness, and soundness — helps a finance professional capture the writing assistance while ensuring the board pack meets its high standard. Using AI well for the drafting, with the finance professional ensuring the board pack is sound, is how a finance professional saves time on the board pack without compromising it.

The Finance Professional’s Essential Role

The finance professional’s role is essential in using AI for the board pack, because ensuring the board pack is accurate, appropriate, and sound requires the finance professional’s understanding, judgement, and verification, which AI cannot provide. The finance professional must ensure the board pack accurately reflects the actual financial position and performance, which requires their understanding of the substance, not AI’s plausible generation. The finance professional must ensure the content is appropriate for the board — pitched rightly, presenting the right matters in the right way — which requires their judgement about what the board needs. And the finance professional must verify the board pack is sound, taking ownership of it as the deliverable that goes to the board.

This essential role means AI assists with the drafting but does not replace the finance professional’s ensuring of the board pack’s accuracy, appropriateness, and soundness. The finance professional remains responsible for the board pack meeting the standard the board requires, using AI to help with the writing but ensuring the deliverable is sound. Given the board pack’s high stakes, this role is particularly important — the finance professional must be especially careful to ensure the board pack is accurate and appropriate, because the board relies on it and the consequences of errors are serious. A finance professional who plays this essential role — ensuring accuracy, appropriateness, and soundness, verifying and owning the board pack — uses AI for the board pack while ensuring it is sound; one who abdicates this role, trusting AI’s output uncritically for a high-stakes deliverable, risks a board pack that misleads or fails the board. Understanding the finance professional’s essential role — ensuring the board pack is accurate, appropriate, and sound — is key to using AI for the board pack well. The finance professional’s role is essential and cannot be delegated to AI, particularly given the board pack’s high stakes.

How to Approach Using AI for the Board Pack Sensibly

A finance professional should approach using AI for the board pack sensibly, capturing the drafting assistance while ensuring the board pack is accurate, appropriate, and sound. This means using AI to help draft the narrative, commentary, and explanatory elements, capturing the time saving on the writing, while the finance professional ensures the substance is genuine, the content appropriate, and the board pack sound through their understanding, judgement, and verification. It means being particularly careful given the board pack’s high stakes, verifying thoroughly and ensuring appropriateness, because the board relies on the board pack and the consequences of errors are serious.

Approaching AI use for the board pack sensibly also means using AI as a drafting aid that expresses the genuine substance appropriately, not as a source of the substance or a producer of content that goes to the board unverified. And it means the finance professional retaining ownership of the board pack and its quality, ensuring it meets the standard the board requires. A finance professional who approaches AI use for the board pack this way — using it for the drafting, ensuring accuracy, appropriateness, and soundness, being especially careful given the stakes, retaining ownership — captures the drafting assistance while ensuring the board pack is sound; one who relies on AI uncritically for this high-stakes deliverable risks a board pack that fails the board. Understanding how to approach using AI for the board pack sensibly helps a finance professional capture the value while ensuring the board pack is sound. Approaching AI use for the board pack sensibly — capturing the drafting assistance while ensuring the board pack is accurate, appropriate, and sound — is how a finance professional saves time on the board pack without compromising this high-stakes deliverable. This connects to the guidance on board pack preparation and the safe-use principles in where AI helps and where it is dangerous.

Maintaining the Board Pack’s Voice and Judgement

A particular consideration in using AI to draft the board pack is maintaining the board pack’s appropriate voice and the finance professional’s judgement in it, because the board pack is not just information but a considered communication to the board. The board pack conveys the finance function’s view of the position and performance, pitched appropriately for the board, reflecting the finance professional’s judgement about what matters and how to present it — and this considered voice and judgement are part of what makes the board pack valuable to the board. AI-drafted content, if used uncritically, could produce a board pack that is generic or that lacks the considered voice and judgement the board pack should carry.

Maintaining the board pack’s voice and judgement means the finance professional shaping the board pack to reflect their considered view and judgement, using AI to help articulate this rather than to determine it, and ensuring the final board pack carries the appropriate voice and the finance professional’s judgement about what matters and how to present it. The finance professional should not let AI-drafted content flatten the board pack into generic reporting, but should ensure it reflects the considered communication the board pack should be. A finance professional who maintains the board pack’s voice and judgement — using AI to help articulate their considered view, not to replace it — produces a board pack that carries the value the board needs; one who lets AI determine the board pack risks a generic deliverable lacking the considered judgement. Understanding the importance of maintaining the board pack’s voice and judgement helps a finance professional use AI for the drafting while preserving what makes the board pack valuable. Maintaining the considered voice and judgement, using AI to help express rather than to replace them, is part of using AI well for the board pack, and it preserves the value the board pack should carry.