King V and AI: what boards must now oversee

When King V applies

The Institute of Directors in South Africa and the King Committee published King V on 31 October 2025. It replaces King IV for financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2026, with early adoption encouraged, and reduces the principles from 17 to 13.

What it asks of boards on AI

• Govern data, information and technology so they support the organisation's strategy.
• Make sure technology is acquired, developed and used in a way that is effective, compliant and ethical.
• Oversee AI against values including human centricity, accountability, transparency and explainability.
• Ensure clear accountability for AI outputs and outcomes, with human oversight and override mechanisms scaled to risk.
• Assess emerging technologies against the organisation's existing risk appetite and tolerance.

Commentators have summed up the shift as boards needing to be technologically literate, not only financially literate. The board may delegate this work to a risk or technology committee, but it keeps the accountability.

Disclosure

A disclosure template accompanies the code, and the governing body approves what goes into it. In practice that means a board will be asked what AI the organisation uses, who is accountable for it and how oversight works, and will need evidence to answer.

Turning the principle into evidence

1. 1An AI registerEvery system that makes or shapes consequential decisions, kept current. Without it the board cannot know what it oversees.
2. 2A named person for each systemAccountability for outputs means a person, with the authority to override, not a committee.
3. 3Override that works and is usedA mechanism nobody ever uses is not oversight. Records of overrides, and the reasons, show it is real.
4. 4A record over timeBoard reporting is stronger when it rests on a continuous record rather than a point-in-time attestation.

King V is voluntary and applied on an apply-and-explain basis. It supplements law, it does not replace it: POPIA and sector rules still apply in full.