Your board approves remuneration. Does it govern it?
Many remuneration decisions rest on benchmarking, CEO recommendation and committee judgement. The gap shows up later, when discretion, fairness, retention treatment or executive authority needs to be explained.
The Remuneration Framework gives Chairs, RemCo Chairs, CEOs and Company Secretaries a clear structure for how rem decisions are made, escalated, recorded and explained.
Real-world Triggers
Rem governance gaps usually become visible around specific decisions:
- a CEO contract renegotiation or transition where the board has to justify its reasoning
- a retention or sign-on payment that starts looking like special treatment
- an STI or LTI discretionary adjustment applied with no documented threshold
- a leaver treatment that sets a precedent no one intended
- a gender pay gap publication, internal equity concern or executive grievance
- an audit, adviser, lender, funder, insurer, regulator, PE or proxy adviser question
- a new RemCo Chair, new Chair, new CEO, board evaluation or governance review
These moments tend to expose the same underlying issues: benchmarking is treated as the answer rather than one input, discretion is applied without limits, RemCo and CEO disagree on who reviews and who approves, and minutes record the outcome without the reasoning the board may later need.
What This Solves
Remuneration governance breaks down in predictable ways. The board approves but doesn't really decide. The CEO recommends and the recommendation becomes the decision. Fairness is asserted from market data with no internal evidence. Discretion is applied case by case and the precedents stack up without anyone tracking them. Risk appetite, the Delegation of Authority and rem settings live in separate documents and rarely reconcile.
The Remuneration Framework sets the structure for Board, RemCo and CEO authority, defines what gets escalated and when, requires evidence for fairness and discretion, and gives the board a decision record.
Comparison
| Feature / Domain |  Essential Snapshot (Free) |
 Foundation Edition ($2,950 ex GST) |
 Governance Edition ($12,800 ex GST) |
| Behavioural governance | ⚠️ Awareness only | ✅ Role clarity to reduce drift | ✅ Safeguards for politics, bias, and power dynamics |
| Board, RemCo and CEO roles |  Surfaces the line drift |
Policy-level structure to clarify roles |
Full authority architecture with escalation pathways |
| Pay & performance linkage |  Conceptual only |
Practical prompts to align fixed/variable pay |
Integrated incentive model with role-tier mapping |
| Risk & fairness integrity | Framed as issues |
Design prompts to address fairness and DEI |
Evidence requirements and integration with risk appetite and DoA |
| Designed for | Identifying gaps | Boards adopting a credible structure | Boards needing depth on authority, discretion, evidence and decision records |
What Version Does Your Board Need?
| Situation | Recommended Tier |
|---|---|
| We want to know whether our rem governance has visible gaps | Remuneration Governance Assessment |
| We want to start a conversation about a remuneration framework | Essential Snapshot |
| We need a credible, board-ready framework to clarify roles and align pay with strategy. | Foundation Edition |
| We need detailed authority, escalation, discretion controls and decision records | Governance edition |
| We require a custom solution for a large, multi-entity or structurally complex organisation. | Institutional Edition |
How to Engage with NorthSeat
Step 1 - Assess Your Governance
Download the Essential Snapshot
Free download. The most common tension points.
Remuneration Governance Assessment – $649 ex GST
A board-level read on whether remuneration authority, fairness, discretion and decision records are governed with enough discipline.
🔒 Secure payment via Stripe.
Immediate access upon purchase.
Step 2 - Choose Your Framework
Foundation Edition – $2,950 ex GST
Board-ready framework for role clarity, rem principles, baseline decision discipline and reporting expectations
Governance Edition – $12,800 ex GST
Full remuneration governance architecture with authority pathways, escalation logic, discretion controls, fairness evidence and decision-record structure.
Institutional Edition – Contact Us
Custom design and implementation for large, multi-entity or structurally complex organisations.