The Friction Index™
What the numbers miss
Every board pack you’ve ever read was written by the person it’s grading.
Family principals rely on the operator to self-report. Fund partners rely on portfolio management to self-report. Everyone is reading a performance review written by the person being reviewed, and what it hides tends to surface only after control has already changed hands.
The reality
70%
of family wealth does not survive the second generation.
Williams Group study of 3,200 families
83%
of PE executives say unplanned CEO turnover lengthens the hold and cuts returns.
AlixPartners, 2026
THE VERDICT
One is a family problem. One is a fund problem. Both are governance problems. Neither is measured.
What gets reported
Management reports that the plan is on course.
The leadership team reports alignment.
Every one of these channels is prepared, framed, or filtered by the people whose execution is under review.
Auditors independently verify the financials. No one independently verifies the organisation producing them — until now.
Board Pack · Q3
Clean
Decision Velocity
Information Fidelity
Talent Resilience
Cross-Functional Alignment
Leadership Consensus
Adaptive Capacity
18 months later
Discovered
Decision Velocity
Slow
Information Fidelity
Filtered
Talent Resilience
Fragile
Cross-Functional Alignment
Fragmented
Leadership Consensus
Divergent
Adaptive Capacity
Untested
Who this is for
Two audiences, one blind spot.
Constitutions and ownership agreements govern who decides — not what’s actually happening inside the businesses you own. The Friction Index™ measures whether governance structures are translating into operational reality, before conflict or succession forces the question.
Holding periods now average seven years — long enough for unmeasured execution risk to compound and surface only at diligence. The Friction Index™ tracks governance conditions from acquisition, so the evidence buyers ask for already exists.
THE FRICTION INDEX™
Six organisational governance conditions, measured independently.
Decision Velocity
Information Fidelity
Talent Resilience
Cross-Functional Alignment
Leadership Consensus
Adaptive Capacity
Each one is scored by trained diagnosticians using multiple data sources management never controls.
ILLUSTRATIVE OUTPUT
COMPOSITE SCORE
Decision Velocity · 71
Information Fidelity · 48
Talent Resilience · 55
Cross-Functional Alignment · 43
Leadership Consensus · 67
Adaptive Capacity · 38
1
Trained diagnosticians go inside the operating business and observe how it actually runs, unfiltered by management.
2
Six governance dimensions are scored independently, each verified by two diagnosticians against board reporting.
3
Every finding triggers a specific intervention — authority mapped, reporting installed, knowledge documented.
WHAT CAPITAL OWNERS RECEIVE
01
Friction Index™ and Terrain Matrix
Independent governance scores across six dimensions, showing exactly where a company stands.
02
Boundary Charter
When leadership changes, the governance framework transfers with the business, not the person who built it.
03
Two-Track Reporting
Board pack and independently gathered data on one page — divergence is where the real story lives.
04
Board Pack Fidelity Audit
Management’s claims verified against source data every quarter, showing what holds up under scrutiny.
05
Systems Institutionalisation
Operational knowledge documented so it survives departures and leadership transitions.
Not another audit
What no other tool in the stack does.
Independent of management
Management participates but does not control what is measured or how findings are reported.
Measures operations, not perception
Assessed through direct observation and board pack verification — how the organisation actually runs, not how it reports.
Measured continuously, not once
Re-scored at scheduled intervals for as long as the asset is held, not a one-time diligence snapshot.
Our Philosophy
“I sat between the owners and the companies they owned. The financials always arrived on time. The governance conditions producing them were falling apart underneath. This system was built to see that early.”
-Rachel Fung, Founder and Chief Methodologist
Before you start a conversation
The questions capital owners ask first.
How is this different from an audit? I've never heard of anything like it.
Is this like consulting?
Will management see this as surveillance?
No pitch deck. No sales call. Just a conversation about whether Riverbank OS™ fits the ownership context.
Organisational governance diagnostics for Private Equity funds and Family Offices.
CONTACT
© 2026 Riverbank Intelligence Pte. Ltd.