How to Get Your King V Disclosure Framework Right in Your First Reporting Year

King V is no longer on the horizon. It is already in effect, and for organisations with financial years that commenced in January 2026, the first reporting period is already underway. That changes the conversation considerably. The question has shifted from how to prepare, to whether your governance programme is performing the way it needs to right now.

For many organisations, the honest answer is that it is still a work in progress.

What King V Actually Requires

King V introduces 13 principles, more than 150 recommended practices, and a mandatory Disclosure Framework that must be published publicly on your organisation's website. Governance is no longer treated as an annual exercise. Conflict of interest declarations must be logged at every meeting. Board evaluations are required biennially. Independence assessments need documented rationale for every non-executive member. And all of it needs to form a coherent, evidenced Disclosure Framework that is visible to investors, regulators, and the public at all times.

Courts increasingly treat King V as the standard of care for directors, meaning that gaps in your governance programme are not simply an administrative concern. They carry potential personal liability under the Companies Act.

How to Know If Your Governance Programme Is Holding Up

If your organisation is in its first King V reporting year, it is worth pausing to assess the health of your programme against a few practical questions.

Can you produce your Disclosure Framework quickly and with confidence? Or does assembling it require pulling information from multiple spreadsheets, inboxes, and shared folders? Is your conflict of interest register being updated at every board and committee meeting, or are declarations being captured inconsistently? When was your last formal board evaluation conducted, and are the outcomes documented in a way that would satisfy an auditor? If a regulator requested your governance evidence trail today, how long would it take to produce it, and how complete would it be?

These are not hypothetical questions. They are the questions that surface during audits, regulatory reviews, and moments of reputational pressure. Organisations that can answer them confidently are in a fundamentally different position to those that cannot.

How to Move From Manual Processes to a Programme That Works

The challenge for most organisations is not a lack of intention. It is capacity. Managing 150-plus practices, ongoing evidence requirements, multiple committees, board evaluations, and a publicly visible Disclosure Framework through spreadsheets and shared drives places enormous pressure on Company Secretaries and governance teams. The volume of work is simply not proportionate to the tools being used.

Our King V disclosure report product is built specifically to solve this problem. Rather than assembling your Disclosure Framework piece by piece from disconnected sources, the platform brings principle tracking, evidence documentation, conflict declarations, board evaluations, and committee oversight into a single, structured system. The Disclosure Framework generates from the work you are already doing, rather than requiring a separate production process on top of it.

The result is a governance programme that is not only more efficient, but more defensible. Every decision is timestamped. Every document is attached. Every board signature is captured. When an auditor or regulator asks for your evidence trail, you are not gathering it under pressure. You are retrieving it.

How to Strengthen Your Board Evaluation Process Under King V

Board evaluations are one of the areas where organisations most commonly fall behind. King V requires evaluations to be conducted biennially, with documented outcomes, and the process needs to be structured enough to stand up to scrutiny.

Running evaluations through email or Word documents creates two problems. First, the results are difficult to aggregate and analyse in a meaningful way. Second, the evidence of the process itself is fragile. Our platform runs board evaluations digitally, with anonymous responses, structured reporting, and outcomes that integrate directly into the Disclosure Framework. Board members interact through a simple, mobile-friendly process that requires minimal time and no technical complexity.

How to Keep Your Conflict Register Audit-Ready Throughout the Year

Conflict of interest management is another area where manual processes tend to break down. Declarations made verbally at meetings may not be recorded consistently. Annual disclosure forms, submitted once a year, do not reflect the meeting-level requirements that King V imposes.

Our platform captures conflict declarations at the meeting level, with a timestamped, searchable register that is available at any point. Company Secretaries no longer need to chase board members for forms or reconcile paper-based records before an audit. The register is live, accurate, and always ready to produce.

The Value of Getting It Right Early

Organisations that build a strong King V programme in their first reporting year gain something that cannot be replicated later: a documented evidence trail from the very beginning. By the time your annual Disclosure Framework is due for publication, the evidence is already there. The process is repeatable. Your Company Secretary has the institutional memory of the programme stored in the platform, not in their head.

That continuity has real value. It protects against staff turnover. It supports board succession planning. And it gives your leadership team, your investors, and your regulators a clear, consistent picture of how your organisation approaches governance.

King V was designed to raise the standard of governance across South African organisations. The first reporting year is the moment to demonstrate that your organisation takes that seriously. If you would like to see how our platform can support your King V programme, get in touch for a walkthrough.