When you think of your legal team, what roles do you think of? You’d probably think of your General Counsel or your Head of Legal. You might even think of a Flexible Consultant, Legal Project Manager, or an MLS Lawyer – but do you think of a Company Secretary?
At Pinsent Masons Vario, we provide a range of alternative legal services to our clients, including a Company Secretarial (Co Sec) offering. We do this because the creation, governance and management of legal entities can be a time-consuming, labour-intensive, and at times technically demanding activity. Having a designated Co Sec service allows us to help your business to navigate these challenges, allowing you to focus on strategic business activities.
What does a Company Secretary do?
Within a business, the Company Secretary completes a wide range of important activities. Ultimately, they are responsible for ensuring that their company complies with the regulatory and statutory requirements affecting the business. This then translates into a varied workload, with company secretaries responsible for maintaining the corporate records, organising and attending the board meetings, drafting and filing legal documentation, providing governance advice to the company, and handling a range of communication matters. They will be involved in the communications between the board and shareholders, or between the board and the regulatory authorities, as well as a number of other parties.
Is a Company Secretary a junior role?
Entry-level roles do exist, and in smaller organisations, it is possible that some of the duties of a Company Secretary may be performed by an individual at an earlier stage of their career. However, in larger and mature businesses, the Company Secretary is typically seen as a key member of the board. The fact that they are advising the board, and that they are responsible for ensuring legal and regulatory compliance, means that it is a role requiring significant expertise and experience.
Is a Company Secretary a full-time role?
It certainly can be. It depends on the size and complexity of the business. In large organisations, the Company Secretary requires a dedicated person to undertake the specialised and varied needs of the business. In fact, it can require a team of people within a company secretariat function to ensure the business is run in a compliant manner. In smaller organisations, the company secretarial role may be performed by someone alongside other responsibilities that they may hold. In both cases, elements of, or all of the function can be outsourced to external parties.
How do you outsource the work of a Company Secretary?
We work for a range of business sizes. In smaller or mid-sized businesses, the Co Sec work may be outsourced entirely to us. Therefore, we will pick up the maintenance and updating of their corporate records, annual filings, and board meeting support; board meeting support might include organising the meetings, preparing the packs, attending and minuting the meeting and updating the actions tracker. For larger organisations, they may already have a Company Secretary in place, but they are looking to free-up the in-house team by outsourcing part or all of their Co Sec responsibilities, and free up their time to focus upon more strategic initiatives,
How do you choose who to outsource Co Sec work to?
We would recommend speaking with us! However, in all seriousness there are a number of factors to consider.
- Who is completing the Co Sec work? – It is specialist and technically challenging role, some providers staff their teams with administrators; to ensure compliance, a team of experienced Co Sec practitioners must be involved.
- What is in scope? Understand what is included, and for what fee. What supplementary fees are there for out-of-scope work.
- Understand access. How will you contact your Co Sec team? How available will they be? What are their response times?
- How visible will your Co Sec records be? How easily can they be accessed?
- Finally, do the people you meet feel like a team that you will enjoy working with? The Co Sec service is a crucial function for the compliance and success of a business. It is important that you enjoy working with your service provider, that they understand and fit with your values, and that they wish to positively impact upon your business performance.
If you think that our Co Sec offering can help your business, get in touch to see what services we can provide you with.
For further information, please contact:
Henry Hilton, Pinsent Masons
henry.hilton@pinsentmasons.com
