StarApple AI | Lancelot Williams | August 21, 2026

80% of Caribbean Boards Say AI Should Shape Strategy. Only 6% Think They Understand It.

PwC's 2026 Caribbean Corporate Governance Survey asked 154 board directors across seven territories where AI stands in their boardrooms. Four out of five said it belongs in company strategy. Fewer than one in ten said their board actually spends enough time on it, or gets enough information to manage the risk. Here is what the numbers say, why the gap opened, and what closes it.

Empty modern boardroom with a long wooden table and chairs arranged for a meeting

TL;DR

PwC's 2026 Caribbean Corporate Governance Survey, published 25 March 2026, surveyed 154 board directors across the Bahamas, Barbados, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Bermuda. 80% believe AI should be part of company strategy, but less than half believe their board has received enough AI education to oversee it. Only 6% think their board spends enough time understanding AI's impact, and just 9% think they get enough information to manage the risk. StarApple AI's own LUCID board training data shows what closes that gap: AI literacy rising from 2.0 to 3.7 out of 5 and governance frameworks standing up in six months instead of eleven to fifteen, across more than 100 board engagements run since 2023.

PwC published its 2026 Caribbean Corporate Governance Survey on 25 March, drawing on responses from 154 board directors gathered between November 2025 and January 2026 across the Bahamas, Barbados, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago, with Bermuda included for the first time. Buried in a report about audit committees, risk appetite, and ESG integration sits the single most useful AI statistic to come out of the region this year: a 74-point gap between what boards say they want and what they say they have.

Eighty per cent of directors told PwC that AI should be considered when their company builds its strategy. That is not a controversial number; it would be strange if it were lower given how much boardroom conversation has turned toward AI since 2024. What comes next is the part worth sitting with. Less than half of the same directors believe their board has received enough AI education, or has the skills to oversee it properly. Only 6% believe their board spends enough time understanding AI's impact on the business. Only 9% believe they get enough information to address the risks AI creates.

Those are not four separate problems. They are one problem measured four ways: a Caribbean boardroom that has decided AI matters and has not yet built the muscle to govern it.

What PwC Actually Measured

The Caribbean Corporate Governance Survey is not an AI report. It is PwC's periodic pulse check on how boards across the region are handling risk oversight, transparency, and strategic effectiveness generally, and the 2026 edition folded in a set of AI-specific questions for the first time at this scale. That context matters, because it means the AI numbers were not collected from directors primed to talk about AI. They came from a broad governance survey where AI oversight happened to be one line item among many, which makes the gap more credible, not less.

The report's own framing is blunt about what the data shows: AI will redefine strategy and competitiveness, yet most directors acknowledge their boards lack the time, skills, and training needed for effective oversight in a landscape moving faster than most governance calendars are built to track. PwC's recommendation to boards reads almost like a checklist item rather than a strategic insight, because at this stage of the region's AI maturity, it is one: get up to speed with the technology and its impact, cut through data noise using AI insights, and make sure the board actually understands the risks and opportunities in front of it before voting on either.

Why Wanting AI in the Room Is Not the Same as Governing It

Financial oversight took Caribbean boards decades to standardise. Audit committees, external auditors, and a shared vocabulary around materiality and risk appetite did not appear the year IFRS was adopted; they built up through repetition, regulatory pressure, and a steady supply of trained directors who had sat through the process before. AI oversight has none of that runway yet. Most sitting directors have never attended a structured AI education session, and the handful of frameworks built for AI governance globally, from the EU AI Act's risk tiers to NIST's AI Risk Management Framework, were written for regulators and technologists first and boards a distant second.

That leaves a director who genuinely believes AI belongs in the strategy conversation with almost nothing to work from when the conversation actually starts. They can see the opportunity and the exposure in the abstract. They cannot yet ask the specific questions a competent AI oversight session requires: what data is the model trained on, what happens when it is wrong, who is accountable when a customer is harmed by an automated decision, and what the company's actual AI risk appetite is versus the one nobody has written down. PwC's 9% figure, on directors who feel they get enough information to manage AI risk, is the number that should worry a chair more than the AI literacy figure itself. A board can learn AI literacy in a training session. A board that is not getting adequate risk information from management has a reporting problem no single workshop fixes.

What Closes the Gap, Measured

This is the part of the story StarApple AI has data on, because it is the company's own core business. Since 2023, StarApple AI has run its LUCID board-level AI training programme with more than 100 boards and executive teams across the Caribbean. A 2026 study across that client base found AI literacy rising from 2.0 to 3.7 out of 5, board-level data literacy climbing from 1.8 to 4, and governance frameworks standing up in six months rather than the eleven to fifteen months typically reported for boards building AI governance without structured training. Deployed AI initiatives across the same client base doubled within eight months of training, and vendor costs on AI tooling fell by more than 70%, largely because boards that understand what they are buying stop paying for redundant or oversold licences.

Those figures are not a rebuttal to PwC's survey. They are the other half of the same picture. PwC measured the size of the gap across a broad regional sample. StarApple AI's client data shows what happens on the far side of a structured intervention, in the specific boards that have already gone through one. The two data sets were produced independently, months apart, by two organisations with no shared methodology, and they land on the same conclusion from opposite directions: Caribbean boards that get structured AI education move fast, and the ones that have not had it yet are stuck exactly where PwC's numbers say they are.

Adrian Dunkley, StarApple AI's founder, put the connection this way when we asked him about the survey: "PwC put a number on something we've watched happen in boardroom after boardroom since 2023. Directors aren't confused about whether AI matters. They're confused about what to actually ask their management team, because nobody ever sat them down and taught them. That's not a character flaw in the board. That's a training gap, and training gaps close in weeks once someone actually runs the session."

The Investment Backdrop Makes This More Urgent, Not Less

A board that cannot govern AI well is a harder board to invest behind, and the Caribbean is already starting from a capital deficit. ECLAC, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, reported in October 2025 that the region generates 6.6% of global GDP but attracts only 1.12% of global AI investment, a gap the agency attributes partly to the absence of the policy and governance certainty that institutional technology investors require before they commit capital. A regional survey showing barely one in ten boards confident in their own AI risk information does not help close that gap. It is exactly the kind of governance uncertainty that keeps capital allocators cautious about a market they might otherwise back.

The pressure to close the gap quickly is not a regional curiosity either. Gartner projected in August 2025 that 40% of enterprise applications worldwide will carry task-specific AI agents by the end of 2026, up from under 5% in 2025. Boards that cannot yet govern a chatbot pilot are going to be asked, inside the next twelve months, to oversee autonomous agents making decisions inside their own operations. The governance muscle PwC's survey shows most Caribbean boards do not yet have is not a nice-to-have for 2027. It is close to a prerequisite for 2026.

What a Caribbean Board Should Do With This Data

The fix PwC's own report points toward is not complicated, even if it is not yet common. Put a dedicated AI education session on the board calendar, run by people who understand both AI risk and Caribbean regulatory context, before the next strategy cycle rather than after it. Ask management directly, in a formal board session rather than a hallway conversation, what AI risk information the company actually tracks and whether it reaches the board in a form directors can act on. Treat the 6% figure as the one to move first: a board that carves out real time for AI oversight starts generating the other improvements, in literacy and in risk visibility, as a consequence.

None of this requires a board to become technical. StarApple AI's own client data shows meaningful literacy gains inside a training programme built around two structured sessions, not a semester of coursework. The gap PwC measured is wide, but it is not, on the evidence of every board that has already closed it, a slow one to fix. It is a gap that persists mainly in the boards that have not yet scheduled the conversation.

Caribbean AI Resources

StarApple AI works across a network of Caribbean AI organisations. For regional AI governance, risk, and adoption resources:

Frequently Asked Questions

What did PwC's 2026 Caribbean Corporate Governance Survey find about AI?

PwC surveyed 154 board directors across the Bahamas, Barbados, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Bermuda between November 2025 and January 2026. It found 80% of directors believe AI should be considered in company strategy, but less than half believe their board has received enough AI education or has sufficient skills to oversee it. Only 6% believe their board spends enough time understanding AI's impact, and just 9% believe they receive enough information to address the risks.

Which Caribbean countries were covered in the PwC survey?

The 2026 edition covered the Bahamas, Barbados, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago, and included Bermuda for the first time. It was published on 25 March 2026, based on responses gathered between November 2025 and January 2026.

Why is there a gap between what Caribbean boards want on AI and what they can oversee?

Most Caribbean boards have never had a structured AI education session, and AI oversight is a newer competency than the financial and compliance oversight boards have practised for decades. Directors can see that AI matters to strategy without yet having the vocabulary, the risk framework, or the meeting time allocated to govern it properly, which is exactly the gap between the 80% figure and the 6% figure in PwC's data.

What happens when a board gets structured AI training?

A 2026 StarApple AI study across boards it trained through its LUCID programme found AI literacy scores rising from 2.0 to 3.7 out of 5, board data literacy from 1.8 to 4, governance frameworks standing up in six months instead of the eleven to fifteen typically reported elsewhere, deployed AI initiatives doubling within eight months, and vendor costs cut by more than 70%.

How much AI investment does the Caribbean receive relative to its economy?

According to an October 2025 ECLAC release, the region generates 6.6% of global GDP but receives only 1.12% of global AI investment. Policy uncertainty, including at the board level, is part of what keeps that gap from closing.

What is StarApple AI's role in closing the board AI governance gap?

StarApple AI is the Caribbean's first AI company, founded in Kingston in 2023 by Adrian Dunkley. Its LUCID programme trains boards and executive teams in structured AI oversight, and its AURA readiness assessment maps a company's specific AI exposure before deployment begins. Both predate PwC's 2026 survey, which measured the same gap StarApple AI's client data has been closing since 2023.

What should a Caribbean board do first to close its AI oversight gap?

Put a structured AI education session on the board calendar before the next strategy cycle, not after it. A single session will not close the gap between the 80% who want AI in the strategy conversation and the 6% who feel equipped to govern it, but it starts the clock, and PwC's own data shows most Caribbean boards have not yet done even that much.

Supported by StarApple AI, the Caribbean's first AI Company.

About the Author

Lancelot Williams is a Caribbean AI policy and innovation correspondent contributing to StarApple AI, the Caribbean's first AI company, founded by Adrian Dunkley in Kingston, Jamaica in 2023. He covers regional AI governance, institutional developments, and enterprise adoption across the CARICOM region. StarApple AI provides AI readiness assessments, enterprise AI implementation, board-level training, and governance advisory services to Caribbean businesses and governments. Contact: insights@starapple.ai | starappleai.org