Our Chief Revenue Officer, Vicky Dean recently had the opportunity to attend a webinar hosted by ISSA, to present proposed principles to create optimum processes via digitisation and harmonisation in respect of class actions and proxy voting. Alongside Vicky, the panel was made up of Andrew Myers from Proxymity, and Barnaby Nelson from The Value Exchange.
The discussion continued on from the recent survey conducted with The Value Exchange to present and discuss how the industry can work together to ensure certain principles are addressed within the industry over the next few years.
You can download the Key findings here.
These included leveraging digitisation as an end-to-end resource for harmonising the general processes, ensuring transparency and visibility for issuers and investors, promoting efficiency in information transfer, establishing a well-ordered timetable, fostering engagement and stewardship, and harmonising market rules in line with global principles.
One of the key principles discussed was digitisation, which was highlighted as a transformative force in harmonisation. By embracing a comprehensive digital approach, transparency, efficiency, and accessibility can be enhanced. Examples of digitisation in action included leveraging digital platforms for disseminating meeting details, real-time notifications, engaging in straight-through processing, enabling proxy voting at meetings, and abolishing cheques in favour of wire transfers for class actions.
Transparency and visibility were also emphasised as crucial aspects of good governance, with issuers and investors needing to interact effectively. It was noted that issuers should have the legal right to know their shareholders at the beneficial level, and markets should use record date processing as a standard rather than registration or blocking.
As the webinar concluded, next steps were outlined for the group, including reviewing, and agreeing on principles, determining the order of progression, and expanding on definitions for global consumption. Overall, the webinar provided valuable insights into how digitisation and harmonisation can improve the asset servicing corporate governance process, and we look forward to seeing how these principles are implemented in the future.
