Digital investor communications platform Proxymity has exclusively connected to Computershare in South Africa in an effort to enhance the country’s real-time proxy voting and vote confirmations.
The service will be live from next week and expands on the two organisations’ previous proxy voting collaborations in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and the UK. Computershare already uses the Proxymity service in several other markets.
As part of the mandate, Computershare clients in South Africa will gain access to Proxymity’s digital platform to deliver electronic meeting announcements instantly. They will also receive votes from their investors in real-time.
Proxymity’s digital proxy voting service aims to rectify the inefficiencies of existing voting channels and caters to increasing demand for transparency from issuers, intermediaries and investors, ensuring that investor communications are delivered in real-time and error-free through the full chain of ownership using “golden source” data.
Computershare clients will benefit from the real-time receipt of votes from investors and investors can receive vote confirmation that their votes have been cast, all the while bypassing the need for manual intervention, says Proxymity.
This is expected to result in a markedly improved voting experience upon take up of digital, real-time proxy voting, it adds.
Dean Little, co-founder and CEO of Proxymity, says: “Computershare is an important issuer agent in South Africa, and we look forward to creating an efficient and immediate impact for the market as a whole.”
Bennie van der Westhuizen, CEO of Computershare South Africa, adds: “Our agreement with Proxymity to help improve governance in South Africa is particularly exciting, given the demand for increased accuracy, flexibility and transparency across investor communications. The Proxymity solution will also reinforce the effective corporate governance that lies at the heart of our clients’ business.”
The news comes in the same week that Broadridge connected with South Africa’s principal central securities depository and central collateral platform, Strate, to extend the proxy voting process in the region.
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