How to become a professional or chartered company secretaries
Official title: Professional/chartered company secretaries
Also called: Company secretary, Chartered secretary, Assistant company secretary, Company secretarial assistant
Chartered company secretaries and governance professionals ensure companies conform to relevant legal, statutory and financial requirements and monitors standards of corporate governance.
Main tasks
- Coordinates governances meetings, such as board and annual general meetings, writes minutes and resolutions
- Analyses internal processes and systems, recommends and implements procedural and policy changes
- Advises on the company's legal responsibilities and relevant regulations and liaises with external regulators, auditors, lawyers and other professionals
- Produces registers of shareholders, annual company reports
- Submits companies information to Companies House and the Stock Exchange
- Maintains registers of shareholders and administers share options schemes and payment of dividends
- Oversees various administrative functions such as the pensions and insurance cover of employees, health and safety, auditing and estate management
How to become one
Entrants usually possess a relevant degree and significant relevant experience. To gain chartered status you must pass the Governance Institute's qualifying scheme, which is required to be the secretary of a public limited company.
Ways in
- University: Science degrees, Offered by 27 universities in the UK
- University: Arts & Humanities degrees, Offered by 27 universities in the UK
Related jobs
- Management consultants and business analysts
- Marketing and commercial managers
- Actuaries, economists and statisticians
- Business and related research professionals
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Questions people ask
How do I become a professional or chartered company secretaries?
Entrants usually possess a relevant degree and significant relevant experience. To gain chartered status you must pass the Governance Institute's qualifying scheme, which is required to be the secretary of a public limited company.
Do you need a degree to become a professional or chartered company secretaries?
Usually. 100% of people in this job hold a bachelor's degree or higher.
Sources
- Office for National Statistics: Annual Population Survey: employment by occupation (April 2025 to March 2026), OGL v3.0, retrieved 2026-10-03
- Office for National Statistics: SOC 2020 Volume 1: structure and descriptions (2026-08-27 edition), OGL v3.0, retrieved 2026-10-03
Updated 2026-10-03
Graduate outcomes: Discover Uni dataset, HESA (www.hesa.ac.uk), licensed under CC BY 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0). Aggregated by subject and adapted by Peernovo.