ISSA Asset Services Working Group White Paper

A Call for Collaboration to Enhance Efficiency in Corporate Actions and Proxy Processes

The ISSA Asset Services Working Group, in partnership with The Value Exchange, has performed survey research on the potential to enhance the efficiency, speed and accuracy of corporate action announcements and address issues in corporate governance, specifically in proxy voting and class actions. This research has highlighted the existing gaps in communication and operational efficiency as well as the importance of collaboration among key stakeholders to resolve the issues that cause delays in disseminating fully accurate information between issuers and their investors.

We propose that such collaboration focus on standardizing data points to facilitate the automation of corporate actions and proxy announcements at their source in alignment with six corporate governance principles.

If there is a consensus on moving forward, ISSA recommends that the CSD and/or listing authority/exchange convene a Task Force to analyze the current practice, and the benefits of fully automating announcements “At Source”, creating Golden Operational Records for Corporate Actions and Meeting/Proxy processes, as well as potential paths to providing that solution.

ISSA believes such discussions could lead to designing global principles and standards to guide national markets in implementing automated solutions for digitized event announcement data created “At Source”. This could lead to a significant increase in the speed and quality of the two-way flow of information and transactions between issuers and investors, maximizing the effectiveness and efficiency of corporate governance. ISSA’s Asset Services white paper can be accessed here.