Broadridge partners with Smith & Williamson Group to meet EU regulatory requirements

By Megha Bhattacharya

Broadridge Financial Solutions announced an agreement with financial services firm Smith & Williamson Group in a bid to provide the latter with its Shareholder Rights Directive (SRD II) solution for proxy voting. The company will be using Broadridge’s solution for supporting its dicretionary and non-discretionary execution clients, across both institutional and retail investors.

“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,” said 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.”

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 are delighted to continue to work with Smith & Williamson to meet its shareholder communications needs,” said 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.”

Recently, Broadridge Financial Services announced a number of new signings for its SRD II solution, thus responding to the need for financial institutions globally to comply with European Commission’s (EC’s) updated Shareholder Rights Directive (SRD II) by the September 3rd 2020.