Aigma
AI Governance Index
Back to Reports
Substance vs. Signal
90%
operative oversight

Boards build the oversight. Substance leads signal.

90% of Nasdaq-100 boards carry an operative oversight mechanism — a charter clause that says the committee shall oversee AI. Only 71% stop at an aspirational statement. Enacted runs 19pp ahead of stated.

As of 2026 Q2Channel: Board / DEF 14ARollup: firm-levelCoding: live
The pattern holds across cohorts

Everywhere we look, mechanism leads messaging.

share of disclosing firms

Each row is a cohort. The distance between the two dots is the substance premium: how far enacted oversight runs ahead of stated commitment.

Fig. 1 · Substance premium by cohortBoard / DEF 14A
0%25%50%75%100%
Nasdaq-100 n=42
+19pp
Insurance n=24
+38pp
Top-50 Tech n=33
+27pp
Nasdaq Semis n=7
+15pp
Top-50 Banks n=8
+12pp
Nasdaq Software n=8
+25pp
Internet & Media n=6
+-17pp
Healthcare n=4
+50pp
Managed Care n=6
+17pp
Substance: enacted board mechanismSignal: publicly commits, may or may not enact
The same pattern, as data

Cohort by cohort

substance ≥ signal

Gap = share with signal minus share with substance. Negative wherever coverage is real: more firms show an enacted board mechanism than an aspirational one.

Fig. 2 · Firm-level rollupcurrent emissions
CohortFirmsGap
Nasdaq-10042-19pp
Insurance24-37pp
Top-50 Tech33-27pp
Nasdaq Semis7-14pp
Top-50 Banks8-12pp
Nasdaq Software8-25pp
Internet & Media617pp
Healthcare4-50pp
Managed Care6-17pp
Reproduce it

Provenance

live Supabase
Source table
aigma_emissions (live Supabase)
Filter
channel = 'B' and superseded_by is null (current emissions only)
Rollup unit
firm. Has substance if it carries ≥1 SUB emission; has signal if ≥1 SIG.
Script
scripts/panel-study/compute-board-sub-sig.ts

All figures read the Board (DEF 14A) channel only, which over-represents substance because a proxy-statement charter is operative by construction. Read it as board-level oversight, not a company's overall AI maturity. Absence of a coded emission is absence of disclosure, not proof a mechanism does not exist.