Automating the Company Secretary Role: How Technology Is Reshaping Board Support

For many years, the company secretary has been the quiet backbone of good governance. For many organizations, the secretary has always been the person who ensures board meetings run smoothly, statutory obligations are met, records are accurate, and directors have what they need to make informed decisions. 

It is generally a role defined by precision, discretion, and an intimate knowledge of how organizations are structured and regulated. 

However, with advancements in technology, the way we work has changed over the years and the demands on the secretarial role have grown considerably. 

Boards are larger and more geographically dispersed. Regulatory requirements have multiplied across jurisdictions. The volume of documentation, filings, and compliance obligations that must be tracked and managed has expanded well beyond what manual processes can comfortably handle. 

Keeping up with all these tasks using the traditional approach is not a viable option for any organization that needs to operate efficiently, remain compliant across multiple jurisdictions, and provide its board with the quality of support that sound governance demands. That’s where the use of technology comes in

Technology solutions like board portal platforms, generative AI tools, automated statutory filing reminders, and entity management systems are changing how board support functions operate. 

If your organization has not yet adopted these tools, it is time to rethink your approach to governance and consider whether your current processes are truly equipped to meet the demands of modern board support. Let’s dive in more on this.  

Understanding the Traditional Company Secretary Role

Before discussing how newer technologies are changing the role of the secretary in organizations, let’s briefly go over how this role has been executed in the past. 

At its core, this role included managing board and committee meetings, maintaining statutory registers, filing regulatory returns, and advising directors on their legal obligations. In some organizations, the secretary would also ensure the organization remains compliant with applicable corporate governance requirements.

For many small organizations, the secretarial role is often outsourced or handled by a single individual wearing many hats. In larger, more complex entities, especially those operating across multiple jurisdictions, several people are dedicated to this role. 

But regardless who does the role and scale, the work has traditionally been labour-intensive, document-heavy, and deeply reliant on institutional memory and manual coordination. 

This over-reliance on institutional knowledge meant that changing company secretaries would often set organizations back considerably, as new recruits required significant time to get up to speed given the volume of organizational knowledge they needed to absorb before they could operate effectively.

The Technology Reshaping the Role

A broad and rapidly maturing ecosystem of technology solutions is now available to support the company secretary function. These tools fall into several distinct categories, each targeting a different aspect of the role. Let’s explore each:

Board portal platforms and entity management software

Board portal platforms provide a centralized and secure environment for distributing board packs, managing meeting schedules, and storing governance documentation.

These platforms also eliminate the logistical complexity of coordinating physical or email-based document distribution and give directors a single point of access to all relevant materials, significantly saving time in everyday workflows.

These platforms are designed to track and manage the statutory information of multiple entities, including directors, shareholders, service providers, registered offices, filing deadlines, and constitutional documents, from a single platform.

At Daymer, we have developed BoardPilot — an automated tool that consolidates the full range of board support functions, from meeting scheduling and document distribution to deadline tracking, task management, document storage and compliance record-keeping — all within a single secure platform.

AI-Assistants

AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude are now heavily used by secretaries to handle some of the most time-consuming tasks in the company secretary's day. Some common tasks AI tools really do well include drafting minutes, summarizing board discussions, and flagging action items. 

While these tools still require human review and judgment, they can significantly reduce the time spent on these tasks if well utilized.  BoardPilot is AI enabled allowing our clients to choose their AI tool of choice to invite to the meeting and prepare board minutes and action points.

Compliance and regulatory tracking platforms 

These monitor filing deadlines, regulatory changes, and jurisdiction-specific requirements, providing automated alerts and workflows that reduce the risk of oversight. Rather than relying on manual calendars or spreadsheets, these systems ensure that nothing falls through the cracks.

BoardPilot enables COOs to automate the monitoring of deadlines and jurisdiction-specific requirements for the entities they manage.  

Key Areas Being Automated

As you may have noticed, one of the major advantages of using technology tools is to automate secretarial tasks that used to be very time consuming. Some of the tasks that organizations should consider automating include:

• Meeting Preparation: This includes compiling board packs, coordinating contributions from multiple stakeholders, formatting documents, and distributing them securely to directors. These tasks can now be managed through platforms that automate much of the workflow, track acknowledgements, and maintain version control.

• Minute Drafting and Action Tracking: Such tasks have historically been among the most burdensome post-meeting tasks. Today AI capabilities integrated in tools like Zoom and Teams can generate draft minutes from meeting recordings or transcripts, identify action items, and assign owners. The secretary’s role now is to review, refine, and approve rather than draft from scratch.

• Statutory filings and Compliance Deadlines: These can now be handled by automated systems given their rule-based, calendar-driven nature. Automated systems can track jurisdiction-specific requirements, generate reminders, and in some cases pre-populate filing forms, which reduces the risk of missing deadlines. 

• Director and Officer Register Management: Maintaining up-to-date registers of directors, officers, and shareholders has traditionally required significant manual effort. Digital platforms now allow for real-time updates, electronic signatures, and automated audit trails. These replace error-prone spreadsheets and physical binders used by secretaries in the past. 

• Conflict of Interest Declarations: Technology platforms can automate the collection, tracking, and renewal of conflict of interest declarations from directors and senior officers. They can also send reminders when declarations are due and maintain a searchable, auditable record of all submissions.

• Document Retention and Archiving: Governance capabilities included in platforms can now automatically classify, store, and apply retention policies to board and committee documents. This ensures that records are kept in line with legal requirements and are easily retrievable when needed for audits or regulatory inquiries.

Our BoardPilot tool can do all the above and because we own the technology we can develop it further to meet our clients needs.

The Limits of Automation — What Technology Cannot Replace

Despite the advancements in technology, not every secretarial task can be automated, and understanding this is really important. Some tasks that you may still need to handle manually include:

• Board Advisory and Governance Counsel: The company secretary is often the person in the room who understands both the legal framework and the political dynamics of the board. Advising directors on matters that require discretion, exploring sensitive governance questions, and providing counsel that draws on experience and professional judgment are deeply human capabilities that no software can replicate.

• Stakeholder Relationship Management: The relationships that a company secretary builds with directors, regulators, legal counsel, and auditors over time are a critical part of how governance functions in practice. Trust, credibility, and the ability to manage difficult conversations all depend on human connection and cannot be automated.

• Crisis and Sensitive Situation Management: When an organization faces a governance dispute, a regulatory investigation, or a boardroom conflict, the company secretary's ability to read the room, exercise judgment, and respond with sensitivity is still a crucial skill. 

• Quality Control of Automated Outputs: Technology is not immune to its own limitations. For example, AI-drafted minutes still require careful human review to ensure accuracy, completeness, and appropriate tone. The company secretary's judgment remains the essential quality control layer in any technology-enabled process.

• Cultural and Institutional Knowledge Application: Understanding an organization's history, culture, and internal dynamics informs countless governance decisions that are difficult to codify or automate. This institutional knowledge, built over time through direct experience, continues to be one of the most valuable things a company secretary brings to their role.

At Daymer Group we can provide experienced individuals to act as the Company Secretary and ensure that your organisation is at the forefront of technology but also ensuring the quality of the Company Secretary service.

Final Thoughts

As new technologies emerge, it is important for organizations to assess how they can be integrated into their existing workflows and what impact they will have on key roles. With AI tools and a growing range of productivity and data management platforms, the role of the company secretary is evolving significantly — and for the better.

These tools are enabling company secretaries to keep pace with growing regulatory complexity and rising board expectations. Tasks like compiling board packs, drafting minutes, tracking filing deadlines across multiple entities, managing director registers, and coordinating conflict of interest declarations that used to take several hours or even days can now be completed in a fraction of the time.

Contrary to many predictions surrounding AI and automation, we do not believe that technology will fully replace the company secretary. What it will do is fundamentally change how the role is executed — shifting the focus from administrative burden to strategic governance counsel. Organizations that embrace this shift thoughtfully will gain not only operational efficiency but a stronger, more credible governance function overall.  

At Daymer, we combine deep governance expertise with a technology-enabled approach to company secretarial services, ensuring that our clients benefit from both the efficiency of modern tools and the trusted counsel of experienced professionals. 

You can also take advantage of BoardPilot, our automated company secretary platform that keeps your board organised, compliant, and audit-ready — all in one secure place.