Company & ROC
Short answer
A Chartered Accountant (ICAI) works on accounts, audit, taxation and financial advisory. A Company Secretary (ICSI) works on corporate law, governance, board procedure and filings with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. Some work is legally reserved — only a CA can sign a statutory audit report, only a CS can issue a secretarial audit report — but incorporations, ROC filings and general compliance are handled by either.
Different statutes, different reserved work
Chartered Accountants are regulated by the ICAI under the Chartered Accountants Act, 1949. Company Secretaries are regulated by the ICSI under the Company Secretaries Act, 1980. Each Act reserves certain certifications to its own members, and no amount of competence lets one sign the other's.
The clearest examples: a statutory audit report under the Companies Act can only be signed by a Chartered Accountant in practice. A secretarial audit report under Section 204, required for prescribed classes of companies, can only be signed by a Company Secretary in practice.
Where the work genuinely overlaps
Most day-to-day corporate compliance sits in shared territory, and either profession may do it:
- Incorporating a company or an LLP.
- Annual ROC filings such as AOC-4 and MGT-7A.
- Drafting board and shareholder resolutions and maintaining minutes.
- Event-based MCA filings on allotments, director changes and capital changes.
- Advising on the procedure for a transaction, though the certification at the end may be reserved.
Which one you actually need
For a small or growing private company the honest answer is usually: one firm that has both, or a CA firm with an in-house company-secretary desk. The reason is not credentials but coordination. Statutory records and financial records describe the same events, and when two separate providers maintain them, they drift — the share register says one thing, the balance sheet another, and the difference surfaces in diligence.
Where a company crosses into secretarial audit territory, or is listed, or is running a scheme before the NCLT, you need a practising CS specifically, and that is not a substitutable requirement.
A note on titles
Under the Companies Act, certain companies must appoint a Company Secretary as a Key Managerial Personnel — an employee of the company, distinct from a practising CS engaged as a professional adviser. Job postings for “company secretary in Bangalore” usually mean the former; a growing company looking for compliance support usually needs the latter.
This article is general information, current at the date shown, and is not advice on your specific facts. Tax and corporate law change, and thresholds and deadlines are amended regularly — check the position before you act on it, or ask us.