Broadridge Financial Solutions is to provide Smith & Williamson Group, a financial and professional services firm in the UK and Ireland, with its Shareholder Rights Directive (SRD II) solution for proxy voting. Smith & Williamson is using the Broadridge solution to support its discretionary and non-discretionary execution clients, spanning both institutional and retail investors.
An existing user of Broadridge’s shareholder communication solutions, Smith & Williamson has upgraded to Broadridge’s enhanced end-to-end Global Proxy solution to fulfil its new responsibilities under SRD II, which had a regulatory readiness deadline of 3rd September 2020. This includes the distribution of meeting agendas within stricter timeframes, reconciling votes on a daily basis and processing votes “without delay.” It also handles all aspects of vote confirmation, including timely electronic confirmation back to shareholders.
“We take our regulatory obligations extremely seriously and it is important to us, and to our clients, that we are well-prepared for a smooth transition that mitigates compliance risk and delivers the combined benefits of greater process efficiency and higher governance standards,” says Nick Murphy, Partner, at Smith & Williamson Investment Management LLP. “Broadridge, with its deep global domain expertise and strong investor communications governance model, has helped us to be well-positioned for delivering to our clients a unified service to manage proxy voting for their full portfolio of holdings.”
“We are delighted to continue to work with Smith & Williamson to meet its shareholder communications needs,” says Demi Derem, general manager of Broadridge’s International Investor Communication Solutions. “Smith & Williamson was one of the first brokers to recognise the implications of SRD II to its business and also understood why being ready for SRD II compliance would be so important to its clients.”
SRD II is global in its scope, insofar as it impacts any financial intermediary that holds or services European equities, irrespective of where the firm is located. It applies to all types of financial intermediaries, including banks and brokers, wealth managers and central securities depositaries (CSDs).
