The Company Secretary is a key governance role, ensuring a company meets its legal and governance obligations. Here is what it involves.
What the role owns
A Company Secretary is responsible for ensuring a company meets its legal, regulatory, and governance obligations. That includes supporting the board and its committees (organising meetings, preparing papers, recording decisions), maintaining statutory registers and records, ensuring filings and compliance requirements are met, and ensuring proper governance processes are followed. The role is central to the administrative and procedural machinery of good governance.
Supporting the board and governance
Beyond administration, a good Company Secretary supports the effective functioning of the board — helping it operate well, ensuring directors have what they need, and advising on governance matters and best practice. In many companies the Company Secretary is a trusted advisor to the Chair and board on governance, procedure, and compliance. This advisory dimension makes the role more than administrative — it is part of how a board governs well.
An underappreciated but crucial role
The Company Secretary role is often underappreciated, seen as administrative, yet it is crucial to good governance and to a company operating properly and lawfully. A strong Company Secretary keeps the governance machinery running smoothly and helps the board and company avoid the procedural and compliance failures that can cause real problems. The role's value becomes most apparent when it is done poorly and things go wrong.
What it means for hiring
A strong Company Secretary combines knowledge of governance, company law, and compliance with organisation, discretion, and the judgement to advise the board. Where a company seeks a Company Secretary — as a standalone role or combined with legal or governance responsibilities — a search can find a leader with the expertise and standing the role requires.
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Explore Executive Search →Frequently asked questions
What does a Company Secretary do?
They ensure a company meets its legal, regulatory, and governance obligations — supporting the board and its committees, maintaining statutory records, ensuring compliance and proper governance processes, and often advising the board and Chair on governance.
Why is the Company Secretary role important?
Because it is central to good governance and to a company operating properly and lawfully — keeping the governance machinery running, supporting the board's effectiveness, and helping avoid the procedural and compliance failures that can cause real problems.
Related: What Is Corporate Governance? · What Does a General Counsel Do? · Board Committees Explained
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