Rising digital risks, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity threats and increasingly complex business networks are pushing corporate reputation higher on the boardroom agenda, with business leaders stressing its growing importance to investment, customer retention and strategic partnerships.

They argued that reputation could no longer be treated merely as a communications or public relations concern, but as a strategic business asset with implications for growth, resilience and enterprise value.

Former MainOne Chief Executive Officer, Funke Opeke, spoke at the 2026 Fellows’ Night and Investiture of the Chartered Institute of Directors Nigeria (CIoD) in Lagos, where she examined the growing importance of trust, transparency and accountability as businesses operate in an increasingly digital and interconnected environment.

She said the shift of commercial activities from physical to digital platforms had made businesses more dependent on systems and partners whose operations customers could not fully monitor, increasing the importance of confidence in companies providing such services.

She said customers transferring money, making payments or relying on digital services were effectively trusting businesses to honour their commitments and protect the reliability and integrity of the systems supporting those transactions.

Opeke cited MainOne’s relationship with First Bank as an example of how reputation could translate into commercial opportunities, recalling that the bank outsourced its data centre colocation services to the technology company despite having the capacity to operate its own facilities.

According to her, the decision reflected confidence in MainOne’s ability to manage critical infrastructure and deliver reliable services, rather than simply a desire to reduce costs.

“The decision was made based on trust in the counterparty,” Opeke said, noting that MainOne’s reputation gave the bank confidence that the company would honour its commitments and remain transparent and accountable.

She said the experience demonstrated how reputation could create business opportunities by giving customers the confidence to outsource critical functions and establish deeper commercial relationships.

However, Opeke stressed that reputation could not be built through branding alone, saying it had to be backed by strong governance, transparency, accountability and operational resilience.

She recalled that MainOne experienced major operational disruptions, including submarine cable cuts, but said its resilience measures were designed to prevent such incidents from becoming wider business failures.

“The reality is that in today’s business environment, no company is immune from the impacts of digitalisation, AI, global supply chains or international financial flows,” she said.

Opeke urged directors to make reputation management part of corporate strategy rather than leaving it solely to communications and public relations teams.

She also warned boards against focusing only on external stakeholders, saying how employees were treated could ultimately affect customer experience.

“It goes beyond how you treat your customers because you cannot treat employees poorly and expect them to treat your customers well,” she said.

Corroborating Opeke, the President and Chairman of the Governing Council of the CIoD, Adetunji Oyebanji, said financial capital alone could no longer guarantee institutional sustainability.

He said organisations must also earn and preserve the confidence of investors, customers, employees, regulators, suppliers and the wider society.

According to Oyebanji, technological disruption, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, sustainability pressures, regulatory complexity and changing stakeholder expectations had made reputation a boardroom responsibility.

He said boards played a central role in building and protecting institutional trust through the quality of their decisions, the integrity of their oversight, transparency, effective risk management and willingness to hold management accountable.

Oyebanji warned that governance weaknesses could quickly translate into financial, regulatory, operational and reputational consequences, particularly as information travelled rapidly and corporate decisions faced heightened public scrutiny.

He urged directors to consider not only the commercial soundness of decisions but also their ethical, responsible and transparent dimensions, including their potential impact on stakeholder confidence.

He said directors should continually assess whether their decisions could withstand stakeholder scrutiny and whether they would strengthen or diminish confidence in their institutions.

The CIoD president said organisations should be judged not only by what they achieved but by how they achieved it, adding that trust must be earned through responsible decisions, ethical conduct, transparency and accountability.

He said CIoD would continue to strengthen directors’ competence, professionalism, ethical consciousness and leadership capacity as technology, regulation, business models and stakeholder expectations evolved.

He further urged boards to embed reputation, trust and accountability in corporate strategy, governance systems, risk management and organisational culture as businesses navigate an increasingly digital economy.

About 536 directors were inaugurated as fellows of the institute at the programme.