Assistant Company Secretary

Assistant Company Secretary

This role is ideal for a chartered professional who thrives in a fast-paced environment and is passionate about delivering high-quality corporate governance and compliance support across a complex group structure. You will play a key role in ensuring the smooth operation of board and committee processes, subsidiary governance, maintaining robust corporate records and supporting strategic transactions.

Your key responsibilities will include, but not limited to:

• Be a key point of contact for the board and its committees, and provide them with an effective, efficient, and valued advice on applicable company law and corporate governance matters.
• Assist the Group Head of Legal (Commercial) and Company Secretary to overseeing corporate governance arrangements across the Group, drafting and reviewing governance policies, procedures, and internal controls.
• Monitor regulatory developments and ensuring compliance with applicable laws, codes and best practice guidance (e.g., Companies Act 2006, UK Corporate Governance Code where relevant) and translate regulatory change and internal audit findings into improvements in governance and operational delivery.
• Undertake annual review and update of Board and committee terms of reference.
• Maintain the conflicts of interest register and register of directors’ interests.
• Coordinate the preparation and distribution of Board and committee agendas and meeting packs, working closely with senior stakeholders and the secretariat team.
• Attend and minute specified board and executive committees and maintain action logs.
• Take a leading role in corporate events, board effectiveness reviews and director induction and training programmes.
• Support the Risk and Compliance team with SM&CR aspects of director onboarding.
• Lead on the management of the Group’s 200+ subsidiary entities, including changes to directors, registered offices, share capital and entity elimination activities.
• Manage the maintenance of the Group structure charts and reporting updates to Skipton Building Society on Close Links and Controllers.
• Support the management of the Group’s outsource secretariat provider to ensure statutory records and filings with Companies House are fully up to date.
• Support teams on secretariat aspects of corporate transactions, including acquisitions, disposals and restructures.
• Coordinate approvals and filings related to corporate activity.

Knowledge, Skills, Experience and Training required:

• Qualified chartered secretary (CGI/ICSA) - partly qualified considered with significant experience in a company secretariat setting.
• Experience of providing support to boards, executive or board committees (or equivalent) and subsidiary management in a large group
• Ability to work under pressure on own initiative, prioritise work and consistently manage conflicting deadlines, with a high attention to detail and accuracy.
• Practical common-sense approach to deliver appropriate advice for the business context.
• Self-motivated, adaptable, and team-oriented.
• Excellent communication skills, with ability to adapt style for different audiences, and to summarise and simplify issues and drive a positive outcome.
• Basic knowledge of and interest in leveraging AI and other technology to enhance efficiency and effectiveness.