ADP Investor Communication Services, which dominates the outsourcing of proxy voting by clients of custodian banks, has extended its so-called “voting confirmation programme” to all clients after testing it successfully last year.
ADP explains that the integrity of the proxy process depends on voting information arriving in the hands of the shareholders in time for materials to be reviewed, voting selections to take place, and votes to be cast. Most importantly, it relies on those responses being tabulated accurately and in time to be represented at the company’s annual meeting.
The service improvement now means that all institutional investor clients using ADP’s ProxyEdge platform will be provided confirmation that their votes were represented at the shareholder meetings where ADP provides tabulation services. With vote confirmation, says ADP, investors can feel confident that the votes they cast have been represented and accounted for at the shareholder meeting.
ADP says it recognized the need institutional investors have for a greater level of confidence that their votes were being represented at shareholder meetings, and has responded to that need by developing a confirmation mechanism for all clients that use its ProxyEdge electronic voting platform.
ProxyEdge is an internet-based tool that allows institutional investors to manage, track, reconcile and report their proxy voting through electronic delivery of ballots, online voting, and SEC-compliant reporting and record keeping. Now, once the confirmation process is complete for a meeting, ADP will present a vote confirmation indicator on ProxyEdge.com.
“The expansion of this programme will enable ADP’s institutional Investor clients to benefit from a reliable, transparent confirmation process and feel confident that every vote will count,” says Bob Schifellite, Senior Vice President and General Manager of ADP Investor Communication Services.
ADP initially introduced its pilot vote confirmation programme for the 2006 proxy season in the US to the institutional investors of participating custodians in April 2006. Now, ADP has expanded the programme to all interested custodians in time for use during the 2007 proxy season.