Anyone who has to fill a seat on a supervisory board in the Netherlands, whether a raad van commissarissen or a raad van toezicht, is quickly told that good supervisory directors are hard to find. That complaint is understandable and partly justified. In my work, however, I see that the pool being searched is often smaller than it needs to be. Part of the scarcity is created at the table, by the board itself.
It usually starts early. When a seat falls vacant, a name is mentioned before the profile is on paper, and the profile then asks for a combination of expertise that few people hold at the same time. Both habits are easy to understand. Together they determine who comes into view at all.
Why the demand for supervisory directors has grown heavier
Expectations of supervision have risen in recent years, and the profiles show it. Financial expertise and risk management were already standard; digitalisation and cyber security are added more and more often. That this shift has not yet reached every board is clear from the most recent monitoring report of the Dutch Corporate Governance Code Monitoring Committee (December 2025): listed companies take knowledge of new technology and cyber risks into account only to a limited extent when drawing up profiles and selecting supervisory and executive directors.
In regulated sectors there is an additional formal threshold. In 2025 De Nederlandsche Bank, the Dutch central bank, assessed 1,788 executive and supervisory directors at the institutions it supervises for suitability and integrity. On average around 3 percent of these assessments end negatively, either through a decision by DNB or because the application is withdrawn. Since 1 October 2026 reappointments no longer need to be reported, but anyone who takes on a heavier role on reappointment is assessed again.
The law also limits supply. Under the Dutch rules limiting the number of board seats, a person holding more than four supervisory positions at large legal entities cannot be appointed to another one, and a chair counts double. On the day of writing, one aggregator of board vacancies listed 120 open seats; 43 of them explicitly asked for financial or audit expertise. Many boards are looking for the same thing at the same time.
The limit nobody ever set
Yet scarcity is only part of the explanation. Organisations create another part themselves, for example by applying an age limit that is written down nowhere and that nobody ever decided on.
That limit shows up in my work in two ways. One is explicit: the board wants to bring in a younger generation, and for a board whose composition has not changed in years that is a defensible starting point. The other is implicit and more damaging. A candidate over sixty is not rejected but simply not called, with an argument that can always be phrased as something other than age.
What is lost is exactly what supervision exists for. A board has no need for someone who understands the latest technology in every detail; that is what the executive is there for. It needs someone who has been through a cycle before and recognises how it tends to end. That quality does not develop any faster than time allows.
The risk of the same names
A board that searches within its own circle almost always ends up with people it already knows. That is not bad faith. A familiar name feels like a smaller risk of a wrong appointment. The long-term effect is less reassuring. The same people end up on several boards, with less time per organisation and with fellow directors they know from elsewhere. The legal limit sets a ceiling, but practice often reaches its limits sooner.
What matters most for the quality of supervision is that a board organises challenge. That becomes harder as everyone at the table shares the same meetings, the same networks and the same assumptions. A board appointment is therefore not a recruitment question but a decision about how the board wants to form its judgement.
What local ties mean for the search
At housing associations and public-sector organisations in the IJmond and Kennemerland region, west of Amsterdam, profiles regularly ask for strong local ties alongside board experience and financial expertise. That is easy to defend: anyone supervising an organisation in the middle of Velsen, Beverwijk or Haarlem should know that environment. At the same time the circle becomes small. Whoever sets all these requirements at once soon finds themselves searching among people who know each other. It then helps to decide, requirement by requirement, whether it is truly non-negotiable or could also be met within a year of appointment.
From the other side of the table
For experienced executives and managers considering a first supervisory role, this has a direct consequence. They are often better suited than they think, and yet rarely asked, simply because nobody on the board knows them. Anyone who wants to take that step does well to make their experience visible beyond their own organisation, and not to be put off by stories about liability. In early 2026 the Dutch Supreme Court confirmed once more that the threshold for personal liability of supervisory directors is high.
In a conversation with a board, a candidate is also entitled to ask questions. How much time does the seat really take, outside the meetings? How does information reach the board, and what is the relationship with the executive? And why is the board looking for someone outside its own circle right now? The answer to that last question says a great deal about the room a new director will be given.
In closing
A board that wants to widen its pool does not start with a broader search but with its own profile. Which requirements are truly necessary, which limit is applied without anyone saying so, and does that limit still serve the decision? Boards that answer those questions honestly often find more candidates than expected.
Is your board facing a vacancy and would you like to establish first what the seat really requires, or are you considering a first supervisory role yourself? A conversation about it is always welcome.
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