U.S.-based fintech Broadridge Financial Solutions announced on Tuesday the first phase of its enhanced virtual shareholder meetings (VSM) platform. According to Broadridge, the VSM will increase accessibility, transparency, and engagement to meet the rising expectations of corporate issuers, mutual funds, and shareholders.
The new experience is expected to be rolled out over the next several months and will include:
- A next-gen user interface–streamlined navigation and enhanced video integration will enrich the experience and further engage shareholders.
- Easier meeting management–modular options, simple and intuitive controls and role-based views will enable the issuer to easily set up, manage and execute the live meeting as well as streamline the preparation process and enable dry runs and dress rehearsals more easily.
- Enhanced Q&A functionality–the new platform will enable issuers to more easily manage, organize and address shareholder questions, increase transparency and provide new options for issuers to tailor the Q&A experience for their meeting and their shareholders.
While sharing more details about the platform, Cathy Conlon, Vice President of Strategy, Product Management and Business Development at Broadridge, stated:
“Broadridge’s plan to enhance its VSM technology will include a next-gen user interface, streamlined navigation and a better experience for all participants, including management, board members and shareholders. As part of an industry working group examining virtual shareholder meetings, there is movement towards creating an open source validation framework to enable issuers to choose any virtual meeting platform and have their shareholders validated onto it. Broadridge is leading that effort and has made extensive investments and developed APIs that will enable this vision for the 2021 proxy season.”
Broadridge went on to add it is on track to facilitate almost 2,000 VSMs in 2020, up from 326 meetings in 2019.