The hidden governance gap nobody wants to own: authorised signatories
When governance failures make headlines, attention tends to focus on the dramatic culmination: a faulty approval, an unauthorised transaction, a breached control, a missed escalation.
But long before those moments hit the board pack (or the press), there are early warning signs that governance teams often overlook. And one of the most common root causes is deceptively simple:
Poor management of authorised signatories.
In other words: not knowing, with certainty, who is allowed to do what, on behalf of the organisation, at any given moment.
Why authorised signatory management is a critical control, not an admin task
Authorised signatory data is one of the most foundational control mechanisms organisations rely on. It quietly underpins almost every significant obligation and transaction. It determines who can:
Approve payments and transfers
Sign legal agreements and contracts
Authorise regulatory filings and disclosures
Open and operate bank accounts
Commit the business to liabilities that can last years or decades
Yet in many organisations, these critical permissions are still recorded in:
Spreadsheets maintained by “the one person who knows how it works”
PDFs emailed to banks and never updated again
Shared drives with multiple conflicting versions
Static policy documents that lag reality by months
Or, most worryingly, in people’s memory
From a governance and risk perspective, this is the equivalent of running your access control system on Post-it notes.
How governance drift starts: Small gaps that quietly compound
When signatory management is manual, fragmented, or informal, it creates the perfect conditions for governance drift, or a slow, often invisible erosion of control.
Common patterns include:
Outdated authority
Departed employees and retired directors remain on signatory lists for months (sometimes years) after they leave. Their “authority” lives on in the system, even when they don’t.Informal delegation
New leaders take on responsibilities without formal authority updates. Teams assume “everyone knows” this person can sign, but the official record disagrees (or doesn’t exist).Shadow signatory lists
Business units, treasury teams, legal departments, or local entities quietly build their own versions of “who can sign,” because the central list is never quite right or easy to access.Slow updates and bottlenecks
Changing a signatory requires forms, wet signatures, manual reviews, and back-and-forth with banks or counterparties. As a result, updates are batched, delayed, or never fully completed.No single source of truth
Different systems (HR, banking, legal, entity management, ERP) all contain partial, inconsistent versions of authority, with no clear owner or real-time reconciliation.
By the time an issue surfaces, a long trail of misalignment has already formed.
And boards often ask the same uncomfortable question:
“How long have we been operating with the wrong authority?”
The real business risk: When “who can sign” becomes unanswerable
From a regulator’s or auditor’s perspective, authorised signatory management is not a box-ticking exercise. It sits at the intersection of governance, risk, and operational resilience.
Weak signatory controls can lead to:
Regulatory non-compliance
Under frameworks such as MiFID II, AML, and broader governance codes, firms must be able to demonstrate clear, documented authority over who can approve transactions and commitments.Mandate fraud and operational losses
Fraudsters exploit outdated mandates, unclear approval hierarchies, and weak verification of who is authorised to act. Even small control gaps can create large loss events.Contract and dispute risk
If it’s not clear that the “signatory” truly had the authority to bind the organisation, counterparties can challenge the validity of agreements, or courts may scrutinise them in litigation.Audit findings and remediation costs
Auditors increasingly test the integrity of signatory and mandate management. Exceptions lead to findings, remediation projects, and ongoing monitoring, all of which consume time and budget.Governance credibility damage
When boards discover that critical authorities are unclear, outdated, or unverifiable, confidence in the wider control framework erodes.
In many post-incident reviews, the failure is not that a team didn’t care about governance. It’s that they lacked systems that made good governance realistically achievable at scale.
The core problem: Governance teams don’t lack discipline but infrastructure
Most company secretariats, legal teams, risk functions, and corporate treasuries are highly disciplined. They understand the risks. They draft thorough policies. They design sensible approval matrices.
What’s missing is the infrastructure to operationalise those standards:
Manual processes require constant follow-up and checking
Static documents don’t reflect real-time organisational change
Each bank, jurisdiction, and business unit may require a different format
There is no unified, tamperproof, auditable record of authority
In this environment, even the most diligent team cannot maintain the level of accuracy, traceability, and timeliness that regulators, auditors, and boards now expect.
The result?
Governance becomes aspirational on paper and fragmented in practice.
What good looks like: Digital, real-time authorised signatory management
Preventing governance drift around signatories doesn’t require more heroics from governance teams. It requires a shift in how authority is captured, updated, and shared.
A robust, modern approach to authorised signatory management typically includes:
A single source of truth
A central, digital repository for all signatory and mandate data across entities, accounts, and jurisdictions.Real-time updates
Changes to roles, leavers/joiners, restructures, and delegations are reflected immediately, not weeks or months later.Tamperproof audit trails
Immutable records of who changed what, when, and under which approval – enabling fast, defensible responses to audits and investigations.Granular access and permissions
The right people can view and update data at the right level (group, entity, country, function) without losing control or creating bottlenecks.Secure internal and external sharing
Banks, auditors, counterparties, and internal teams see an accurate, up-to-date view – without relying on PDFs, email attachments, or manual reconciliations.Integration with wider governance frameworks
Alignment with entity management, HR, and banking processes, so that role changes and signatory updates are linked, not isolated.
When these capabilities are in place, “Who is authorised to do X?” becomes a simple query, not a three-week investigation.
How Cygnetise helps organisations close the signatory gap
Cygnetise is purpose-built to solve exactly this problem: Digital Authorised Signatory Management (ASM) and Mandate as a Service (MaaS).
Instead of relying on spreadsheets, emails, and static PDFs, Cygnetise provides:
A secure technology for storing and managing authorised signatory data
Immutable records and full auditability of every change
Real-time visibility and control for governance, legal, treasury, risk, and compliance teams
Instant, tamperproof sharing of signatory lists and mandates with banks and external partners
Granular access controls to align with complex, cross-border governance structures
For financial institutions, corporate treasuries, corporate secretariats, and legal/compliance teams, this means:
Reducing the window in which mandate fraud and unauthorised activity can occur
Demonstrating strong governance and control to regulators, auditors, and rating agencies
Accelerating account opening, onboarding, and approvals without compromising security
Turning a historically painful, manual process into a streamlined, digital control
With Cygnetise, organisations can proactively manage authority in real time, reducing governance drift and preventing minor gaps from becoming major risks.
Authority oversight becomes:
Clear – you know exactly who can do what, across entities and functions
Current – signatory records keep pace with organisational change
Credible – you can evidence decisions and approvals with a tamperproof audit trail
For boards and executives, that transforms a perennial blind spot into a demonstrable strength in the governance framework.
From weak link to strategic control
Authorised signatory management will never be the most glamorous topic in governance. But it is one of the most consequential.
When authority is managed through outdated lists and manual workarounds, governance drift is inevitable. When it’s digitised, centralised, and made real time, it becomes a powerful control that protects the organisation long before risk hits the surface.
With Cygnetise, governance teams don’t need to work harder to stay in control. They just need systems that are designed for the reality of modern, complex organisations.
Want to learn more about Cygnetise? Request a free demo below and one of our team will get in touch with you right away!
FAQ: Authorised signatory management, governance, and risk
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Authorised signatory management is the process of defining, maintaining, and controlling who is legally allowed to act on behalf of an organisation, for example, approving payments, signing contracts, or opening bank accounts. It’s a core governance control that underpins financial, legal, and regulatory obligations.
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Because it directly affects who can commit the organisation to obligations and transactions. If signatory records are wrong or outdated, you increase the risk of:
Unauthorised transactions
Mandate fraud and internal fraud
Disputed contracts and legal challenges
Audit findings and regulatory scrutiny
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Digital authorised signatory management platforms, like Cygnetise, provide:
A single, reliable source of truth
Real-time updates and visibility
Tamperproof audit trails
Secure sharing with banks, auditors, and partners
This makes it far easier to prove that the right people had the right authority at the right time.
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Ownership varies by organisation, but it often sits across:
Corporate Secretariat / Company Secretariat
Legal and Compliance
Corporate Treasury
Risk and Controls
In practice, these teams work together, which is why a shared, digital platform is so valuable.