RACI Matrix

Lighthouse Financial Services Company — Who does what across 20 governance and 13 delivery activities, using a notation extended by two characters that standard RACI does not have. Status as at 16 October 2026.

1. Why Standard RACI Breaks Here

Standard RACI assumes a decision structure in which somebody approves and everybody else feeds in. That assumption holds on most programs, which is why the notation has survived unchanged for decades. It does not hold here.

The alternative to extending the notation is to flatten it — to write a matrix that shows one accountable person per activity and quietly hand the Chair both the evidence job and the decision job. That is exactly the concentration this governance model exists to prevent, so the notation gives way instead of the governance.

2. Notation

A/F appears once, at evidence certification, and is the single cell where the Chair is both answerable for an activity and facilitating the body that consumes it. It is called out rather than smoothed over.

Roles

3. Tier 1 — Governance Matrix

The nine seats that decide. This is the tier where V and F exist.

4. Tier 2 — Delivery Matrix, by Individual

The governance matrix above names seats. This one names people — every delivery owner is a specific individual from the 90-person roster, validated at generation time, and the generator refuses to write if any of them is not a real member of the program.

Who these people are

5. Where Accountability Splits

Three rows carry a V across five columns and an F in the Chair's: scoring the criteria, deciding the outcome, and issuing conditions. Those are the rows where accountability splits, and the split is deliberate.

6. The Observer Problem

The Chief Risk Officer attends every gate, sees every package, and does not vote. Standard RACI offers only C or I, and neither fits well: I understates a role with a standing seat and full visibility, while C overstates it by implying the program must solicit and address input before proceeding.

C is used, with this paragraph as the qualification. The CRO's contribution is observational rather than transactional — the value of the seat is that enterprise risk sees the decision being made, not that the decision waits on it. Recording that as I would make the seat look ceremonial, which is the misreading the role exists to avoid.

7. The Conflict Rule

The matrix cannot show this, because it is a rule about a specific gate rather than a standing allocation. It is recorded here because a reader who takes the V column literally would count five votes at Gate 2 and find four.

8. What the Matrix Reveals

1. The Chair is Accountable on 8 of 20 activities and votes on none of them. That ratio is the governance model in a single number: heavy operational accountability, zero decision authority.
2. Every product and regulatory activity is Accountable to a functional executive, not to the program. Pricing to the Chief Actuary, forms and filings to the GC, hedging to the CFO, channel commitments to the Head of Distribution. The program coordinates work it does not own, which is what makes the matrixed org chart necessary rather than merely convenient.
3. Four executives are both Accountable for work and voting on the program that consumes it. The Chief Actuary signs the pricing basis and votes on whether the business case built from it should proceed. That is unavoidable in a functional carrier and is why the abstention rule at §6 exists at all — it handles the sharpest instance, not the general condition.
4. Resourcing is Accountable to the sponsor, not the Chair. The program cannot staff itself; it borrows from functions. Assumption A-08 — that no competing internal launch draws the same actuarial and IT people in 2027 — is exposed precisely here, and the matrix shows why: nobody in the Chair column can hold anyone.

Maintained by C. Tyrrell, NPD Program Manager and Chair of the Gate Review Board. Related: Stage-Gate Governance Model §4, §6.3 · Org Chart · Gate Conditions Register · Program Charter §8–9.