Maybe the Biggest Breakthrough Ever, We Say, To Increase Retail Investor Voting

In mid-November, Broadridge Financial Solutions announced that big retail broker Raymond James Financial is all set to effect “mobile integration of shareholder voting…to enhance the investor experience…and simplify shareholder voting” for the upcoming meeting-season.

Does this mean what we think it means? Will this allow Raymond James - and Broadridge - to “push” voting information - along with an immediate way to vote - directly to voters…instead of relying on the current “pull- method” for e-delivery…that so rarely lures people to voting sites these days?

Our inquiry was quickly returned by Martin Koopman, President of Broadridge’s Bank Broker Dealer unit, and the answer is YES. Even better, a second, “very large broker-dealer” is in the final testing stages and on-track to be ready this season too, he told us - and eight others want to do the same, and are in various stages of beta- testing, hoping to be ready for this season as well.

“Eureka” thought we: At long last, we are on the verge of solving the real problem with the “Notice and Access Model” - by serving-up everything a shareholder needs to have to cast a vote - along with a quick and easy way to do so.

When we first heard about mobile-voting, we were major skeptics. Who in the world would use their mobile device to review proxy materials - much less to cast votes? Guess what? Five years ago - when mobile voting was new - .07 percent of the votes cast were voted from mobile devices. By 2017 the numbers rose to 7 percent of all votes cast. And, as noted elsewhere in this issue, we believe that a major social change is underway in terms of the ways ordinary people access and act on information - even where members of the ‘older generation’ are concerned.

We also think that the “mobile-device” angle is only half the story here: Among the few real insights that came out of the two SEC “Roundtables” on proxy voting were the comments made by Larry Conover of Fidelity Investments, who made it clear that they are already serving up such information to their retail voters, and providing an easy-to-access internet portal that allows them to cast their votes then and there - and the comments of Dannette Smith, Board Secretary of UnitedHealth - who explained how the Fidelity brokerage site she uses automatically reminds her of upcoming shareholder meeting vote-deadlines whenever she logs-on - and makes it easy for her to vote right away over their voting-app. No need to have a proxy or Notice in front of your nose. No need to have a password, or worse, multiple passwords for each issue either, since the app knows it’s you when you log in to your account.

There is still one big fly in the ointment however: Yes, you can push voting information to prospective voters - and give them a link straight to the voting site as well. But unless the information is delivered in a highly searchable and reader-friendly manner (which only a minority of issuers take the trouble to do these days) voters will lose patience, despite their best initial intentions, and drop off before taking action - as indeed they have been doing.

Issuers…the burden is on you to step up to the plate with reader-friendly materials if you really want to increase your retail investor vote!