What’s new with Diligent: Board prep, entity records and risk oversight

It’s Friday afternoon. A board pack has gone out but follow-ups haven’t stopped. Someone needs confirmation that the right version was shared. Another question comes in about an entity change that didn’t quite line up with the materials. A third message asks who approved what — and when.

For GCs, company secretaries, legal ops teams and board admins, this isn’t unusual. It’s the overlap between board prep and entity work — where records, approvals and timelines collide.

Recent updates across Diligent Boards and Diligent Entities keep prep and records aligned when everything lands at once. Agenda templates standardize how meetings are prepared. GovernAI content is generated automatically when a book is published. And modernized entity pages, with clearer structure and company views, make it easier to trust the records that sit behind board decisions.

Let’s take a closer look.

Diligent Entities: Clearer structure, faster document review, stronger confidence in the record

Entity work gets real the moment someone questions the record — during an audit, a deal, a board request, or a regional filing crunch. Updates in Diligent Entities make it faster to confirm ownership, verify documents, and keep entity data connected across systems, without turning every request into a manual chase.

Group Structure enhancements: Clearer visibility into ownership and control

As entity portfolios grow, understanding how companies relate to one another becomes harder to explain and harder to verify quickly. Group Structure enhancements provide a clearer way to view and share ownership and control across the organization.

What this means for GCs, CoSecs, and legal ops teams:

• See parent‑subsidiary relationships without rebuilding charts manually
• Reduce risk from outdated structure views by keeping visuals aligned with live entity records
• Share structure views that help stakeholders understand how entities connect across regions and business units

How it works:

• Automatically generates a hierarchy from ownership and relationship data in your entity records
• Visualizes parents, subsidiaries, and connections in a chart view designed to scale
• Apply filters such as ownership percentage, jurisdiction, or division to focus on specific questions
• Navigate dynamically through the structure without losing context

Modernized Documents page: Preview documents, confirm details sooner

Document‑heavy workflows often slow down not because files are missing, but because confirming the right details takes too long. Updates to the Documents page bring key information into view earlier, without compromising permissions or control.

What this means for GCs, CoSecs, and legal ops teams:

• Preview documents directly from the Documents page to confirm relevance before opening files
• Generate AI summaries when enabled to speed up initial review
• See signatory details clearly, including who signed, when, and in what role, linked to the correct entity record
• Maintain security by ensuring previews and summaries respect user permissions and configuration

How it works:

• Inline previews open documents in a side panel from the Documents page
• AI summaries can be generated and viewed from document details when enabled
• Signatory tracking surfaces approval details alongside the document record
• Users can switch between the modernized and classic views as needed

API enhancements: Keep entity data connected across systems

When entity data lives across multiple systems, keeping records aligned often means manual updates and double‑checking. Expanded API capabilities make it easier to connect Diligent Entities with the platforms teams already rely on.

What’s included:

• Expanded endpoints for address management, data library records, document upload and query, group structures, and user‑defined field metadata
• Improved appointment APIs covering events such as new appointments, removals, replacements, and resignations
• Better support for automating data flows and reducing manual re‑entry across systems

Company Notices: Call out what teams need to know, fast

Company Notices act as a notice board on each entity record, so key context is visible the moment questions come up. Flag items like: the entity is involved in a Project or transaction, it’s non-compliant, it’s subject to a court order, or it needs executive sign-off before changes are approved. Notices are fully auditable — teams can track what changed, when, and who made the update (including when notices are removed and why).

What this means for GCs, CoSecs, and legal ops teams:

• Surface “need to knows” fast when someone challenges the record
• Reduce back-and-forth when an entity is tied to a Project, transaction, or constraint
• Keep accountability clear when notices change over time

How it works:

• Add notices directly on the entity record to flag key context (Project involvement, non-compliance status, court orders, approval requirements)
• Each notice tracks when it was added or removed, who updated it, and why
• Notices stay visible to the right people without changing the underlying entity record

Your entity compliance, expertly managed

For teams managing global portfolios or limited internal capacity, Diligent Managed Services adds expert execution on top of the Entities platform, helping organizations scale entity compliance without continually adding headcount while maintaining visibility and control.

Ethics & Compliance: Triage third-party risk in minutes, not days

Third-party screening gets slow for a familiar reason: the signal is buried. Analysts spend hours working through false positives, switching between sources, and writing up findings that still need a second pass. Third-Party Risk Intel (TPRI) shortens that cycle by delivering decision-ready triage in minutes so teams can focus human judgment where it actually matters.

AI-powered investigation. Human-led decisions.

• Conventional screening tools can consume 70% of analyst time. TPRI helps give that time back without removing human judgment from the process.
• Cut false positives to near zero so teams spend time on real risk instead of endless review.
• Find what other tools miss with an average of 3+ hidden connections per third party, every time.
• Turn 4-hour investigations into 4-minute decisions so compliance can protect revenue without slowing work down.

And as a Diligent One Platform customer, you can try it yourself. Up to 50 free screenings are included with your subscription, no add-on required.

Explore Third-Party Risk Intel →

Diligent Boards: Consistent preparation, fewer last‑minute fixes

Board prep gets slower when admins have to rebuild the same basics every cycle — fixing agenda formatting, waiting for insights to generate, or chasing confirmation that the right step happened at publish. Updates across Diligent Boards reduce those repeat checks, so each meeting starts from a consistent setup without giving up admin control.

Your agendas, your style, every time

Agendas set expectations for every meeting, but maintaining a consistent format can be time‑consuming when teams rely on Word files or last month’s agenda as a starting point.

Agenda templates help admins save and reuse a preferred layout and branding so agendas stay consistent, even as content changes.

How it works:

• Upload and manage Word agenda templates (.docx), including setting a preferred default
• Apply templates during agenda or book creation so formatting stays consistent across meetings and committees
• Update content directly in Boards without reformatting every cycle

Insights ready without an extra step

AI content such as Smart Summary, Smart Prep, and Smart Risk Scanner is now generated automatically when a book is published. This removes the need for admins to manually trigger generation after publishing.

Admins remain in control. A site setting determines whether auto‑generation stays on or reverts to manual generation, based on governance preferences.

What to know:

• Generation starts automatically when a book is published
• A notification confirms that AI content is being generated
• Books published before this change are not affected

Richer conversations on the go: iOS Messenger rich text formatting

Between meetings, directors and admins often rely on mobile messages to clarify agenda items, highlight key points, or align on next steps. Rich text formatting in iOS Messenger helps keep those conversations structured and easy to scan.

What’s new:

• Apply bold, italic, and underline to emphasize key points
• Use bulleted and numbered lists to outline steps, options, or decisions clearly

Education & Templates: Practical resources to support AGM preparation

Strong governance isn’t just about the tools teams use. It also depends on clear guidance and reusable resources that support consistent execution.

The Education & Templates Library continues to expand with practical materials designed to help board administrators, company secretaries, and board chairs prepare more efficiently and stay aligned ahead of shareholder meetings.

These resources include:

• Short courses and videos exploring AGM fundamentals.
• Ready-to-use, downloadable templates to support with quorum verification, meeting preparation and director nominations.

Look out next month for our Investor Stewardship Fundamentals Learning Path, designed to support board teams and directors in effectively engaging with investors. If you’re already a customer, explore what’s available in the Education & Templates Library to support upcoming board cycles and committee meetings.

Next steps for your governance workflows

• For Entities teams: Review how ownership structures and documents are shared today, and decide whether enabling previews and AI summaries would speed up review without reducing control
• For Boards teams: If agenda templates are rolling out in your environment, agree on a default template and standardize its use across committees. Confirm whether auto‑generation upon publish aligns with your preparation process
• For GCs and legal ops teams: Use clearer structure visibility and faster document review to reduce follow‑up work ahead of upcoming board and compliance cycles

Ready to explore?

If you’re already a Diligent customer, log in today and start using these capabilities. Need help? Your customer success manager is ready to guide you.

Not yet a customer? Request a demo and see how Diligent can support your governance workflows.

Getting started FAQs

What’s live now?

For Diligent Entities: All of the Diligent Entities updates covered in this blog are live now. Your Customer Success Manager can also help you switch between the new UI and the classic experience if needed. Full release details are available in the Diligent Entities Release Notes here.

For Diligent Boards: Some Diligent Boards updates are available now, while others depend on your package, permissions, or admin configuration. Agenda templates are rolling out, and GovernAI auto-generation upon publish is controlled by a site setting. Your Customer Success Manager can confirm what’s available in your environment.

Can I use these features on mobile?

Access board materials and stay on top of meeting prep using the Diligent Boards app, available on the App Store and Google Play.

Do I need to set anything up?

Some features require administrator configuration. Speak to you Customer Success Manager to learn more.