The Real Cost of a Manual Company Secretary Function: Why Automated Company Secretary Software Matters

The automation of repetitive tasks in funds has been underway for the last couple of decades, but how far any given company takes it still comes down to two things: how much it embraces technology, and how willing it is to trust that technology with the job. One function I have noticed many organizations still have not fully automated is the company secretary role.

In many funds, secretaries still prepare board packs by hand, chase down signatures, reconcile document versions across email threads, and maintain meeting minutes and resolutions manually.

The obvious cost to handling such tasks manually is time; automating these repetitive tasks frees your secretary to focus on more critical work and get more done in the same amount of time. 

But the costs go beyond time. Leaving automatable functions unautomated also means slower decisions, weaker audit trails, and avoidable errors that carry real governance and regulatory exposure.

In this piece, we want to share my thoughts on these costs and why funds need to embrace automation where possible, sooner rather than later.

The Time Cost

The most obvious cost is hours. Every board cycle requires compiling packs, chasing outstanding signatures, and reconciling which version of a resolution is actually final.

When this work sits with one person or even a few people managing it manually across email and shared drives, a routine board meeting can take days of preparation instead of hours. 

That time is not neutral. It is time your secretary, COO, or operations team could spend on higher-value work such as investor relations, regulatory filings, or actual governance support rather than document chasing. 

Multiply that across every board you administer and every quarter you operate, and the time cost compounds quickly over time. Automating most of these tasks will give you that time back. 

The Delay Risk

Manual processes are inherently slower to react. A redemption request, a time-sensitive resolution, or a regulatory filing deadline does not wait for a document to be found, approved, and circulated. This can mean missed opportunities.

When approvals depend on someone manually tracking down signatures across time zones, delays are not the exception, but the expected outcome.

In a fund context, such delays can mean a missed filing deadline or a slow resolution, and both can carry real financial and reputational consequences, particularly when investors or regulators are watching closely.

It can also mean delayed investment opportunities. If the board cannot turn around approval for a time-sensitive trade or a capital call in step with the market, it can potentially lose ground to funds who can. 

In markets that move in hours rather than weeks, the time it takes to physically locate a director, confirm they have reviewed the relevant documents, and secure a signature is time the opportunity does not wait for. What starts as an administrative delay may become a competitive disadvantage.

The Error Risk

From my experience, version control is where manual processes break down most visibly. Board members working from different copies of the same document, minutes drafted from memory rather than a clear record, approvals tracked in someone's inbox rather than a system of record.

Each of these is a small failure on its own. But put together, they create real governance exposure. Regulators including CIMA increasingly expect funds to demonstrate not just that a decision was made, but that the process behind it was documented, defensible, and auditable.

A manual company secretary function makes that harder to prove, not because the work was done poorly, but because the paper trail was never designed to hold up under scrutiny. Automation tools address this directly by tracking every step along the way, so each decision comes with a clear, auditable record from the outset.

The Compounding Cost

None of these costs exist in isolation. Time lost to manual processes increases the likelihood of delay. Delay increases pressure, and pressure increases the likelihood of error. You can see the pattern by now: one issue feeds directly into the next.

What looks like a minor inefficiency in isolation becomes a real governance liability when time, delay, and error compound across every board cycle, every fund, and every year a manual process remains in place. Leaving any one of these issues unaddressed does not just carry its own cost, but also compounds the others, and the real cost ends up far larger than it first appears.

How BoardPilot Helps

To help boards close the gaps discussed above, Daymer created BoardPilot to automate a significant share of company secretary functions. The tool was developed by Daymer Group in partnership with CoBOS Technology.

BoardPilot automates the core company secretary functions, including preparing and distributing board packs, tracking approvals and signatures, maintaining meeting minutes and resolutions, and keeping a secure, auditable record of every board document and decision.

When well utilized, it addresses each of the costs discussed above directly:

• Time is returned to your team rather than lost to administration.

• Approvals move faster because the system, not a person, is tracking what is outstanding and who needs to act.

• Every decision carries a clear, timestamped record that can be shown to regulators during inspections.

Key Takeaway

Funds that continue to run their company secretary function manually are accepting real, measurable exposure to delay and error that automation has already solved. And as covered earlier, that cost compounds. The longer a fund relies on manual processes, the bigger that exposure becomes over time.

Of course, some tasks will still need a human hand. Interpreting ambiguous governance matters, exercising judgment on conflicts of interest, and advising the board on a genuinely novel situation are not things the technology can reliably take on yet. 

But a significant share of repetitive secretary work can be automated today, and there is little reason to keep absorbing the cost of doing it manually. Reach out to the Daymer team if you would like help automating your company secretary function with BoardPilot.