Proxymity, a digital investor communications platform that was developed within Citi’s Institutional Clients Group, has raised $20.5 million in a strategic round of investment to form its own entity via a global, industry-led consortium.
The newly formed consortium includes BNY Mellon, Citi, Clearstream, Computershare, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, J.P. Morgan, and State Street.
Proxymity will leverage the new capital to scale the platform and team, build out its investor communications platform, and expand its services to a wider client base and geography.
The platform provides post-meeting vote confirmation and gives investors up to nine more days per meeting to research and vote.
It also offers a shareholder disclosure platform, which automates shareholder ID requests in industry compliant formats without the need for any manual intervention.
The digital investor communications platform’s immediate focus will be the EU markets ahead of the forthcoming Shareholder Rights Directive II implementation.
The Proxymity team will be based in London.
Co-founders Dean Little and Jonathan Smalley, who have over 30 years of combined industry experience in custody product development, have been appointed CEO and COO, respectively.
Little and Smalley formulated the idea for Proxymity while working in Citi’s Equities and Securities Services (ESS) custody product group through an ESS-sponsored innovation programme.
Citi’s Innovation Lab network and D10XSM programme helped Proxymity iterate and evaluate its vision to improve the proxy voting system. The platform was first launched in the UK in 2018.
Little said: “We’re extremely proud of what Proxymity has achieved so far within Citi since we developed the platform in 2017. To date, Proxymity has supported over 3,000 shareholder meetings and, after successful pilots, we’ve fully launched the platform in the UK, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, and Australia, as well as a pilot in Spain.”
“The establishment of this strong consortium is a vote of confidence in Proxymity’s future and overall vision and we look forward to growing the team and suite of products to deliver Proxymity to more institutions around the world.”
Smalley commented: “Taking the platform into consortium ownership means we will have unparalleled ability to scale and leverage each of our partner’s unique role in the industry.”
In addition to a commercial team based in London, Proxymity will maintain a technology and research and development team in Tel Aviv, Israel.
