Company Secretarial

Company secretaries are responsible for a wide range of administrative takes, some of those tasks include:

• Managing board processes – coordinating the timely completion and despatch of the board and committee papers and circulation of agendas.  Ensuring that the business at board and committee meetings is accurately captured in the minutes;
• Ensuring members’ and directors’ meetings are properly called and held;
• Ensuring the necessary registers are established and properly maintained;
• Ensuring that the company's financial records are maintained, and reports prepared in accordance with the requirements of the Act;
• Ensuring records of members’ and directors’ meetings are kept in compliance with the Act and the organisation’s constitution;
• Understanding and ensuring the company complies with its statutory obligations, ensuring requirements of ASIC and other regulators are met;
• Providing or procuring advice for directors regarding application of the Act, company constitution, ASX requirements and other legal and regulatory requirements;
• Development, implementation, communication and maintenance of compliance policies, processes and procedures.
• Advising the board on good practice in corporate governance.  If an ASX listed entity ensuring compliance with the ASX Corporate Governance Principles and Recommendations;
• Promoting the compliance framework to safeguard the integrity of the organisation;
• Ensuring the board has the information it needs to make informed decisions;
• Organising board performance reviews;
• Being involved in risk management and corporate responsibility matters;
• Policy formulation for the board;
• Director induction and maintenance of a director manual;
• Organising directors’ & officers’ (D&O) insurance.

The Corporations Act 2001 ("Act") outlines the legal requirement regarding the appointment of a company secretary.  Each public company must appoint at least one company secretary and at least one of its secretaries must reside in Australia.  A proprietary company is not required to appoint a company secretary, however it should be noted that its duties and responsibilities of a company secretary fall on the directors of the company.

Outsourcing Company secretarial services allows companies to efficiently implement the corporate governance best practices that are now common among organisations.

• Reliable and accurate managing - allowing the company to have a team of professionals who keep a record of the paperwork and prevent the company be being fined for non-compliance or late filing of documentation.
• Experience - by outsourcing company secretarial services, a company can gain a lot of advantages from the knowledge, education and expertise of skills by the company secretary.  A company will benefit from the extensive experience and knowledge of the skilled individuals who have the appropriate qualifications and high level of training in company secretary and compliance.
• Proper Focus on Business Activities - outsourcing the secretarial services means that the company is now relieved from the matters of company registration and compliance and can entirely focus on the development of the business by properly channelling their time and energy.
• Lower Risks - a company and be assured of reduced risks around compliance.  Outsourcing reduces and mitigates the chance of noncompliance.  Outsourcing providers provide a team of professionals to carry out work within a defined timeline to help mitigate noncompliance and improve the credibility of a company.
• Cost-effective - outsourcing company secretarial services hires a person already experienced.  A company would also benefit from cost savings and time control in the fields of jobs, facilities, and training and development since the outsourcing firm already provide them.  Outsourcing company secretarial services saves the expense of recruiting and educating the in-house staff.
• Efficient Technologies - an outsourced provider will have the platforms, equipment and tools required to carried out the job.  This will also reduce the costs of implementing and operating certain information programs.
• Keeping up with the law - companies legislative requirement are regularly changing and due to this, it is important for the companies to ensure they are up to date with all regulatory requirements.  Outsourced providers are trained when there is a change in legislation and have an in-depth understanding of the rules and expertise in the interpretation of the services necessary by the sector.
• Time saving - Since the firms to which the company secretarial services are outsourced are solely focused on the providing of this service, they tend to gain a level of competence which enables them to do things quickly and with a degree of expertise.