Twenty years ago I had to help put together an exchange’s solution for broadcasting corporate actions notifications to the world.  That was before everyone used email, so we had to rely on faxes from issuers.  To ensure that responsibility and liability for accuracy remained clearly with the issuer, and not with the exchange or any data vendor or wire service acting as a distributor, we entered the notification into the exchange’s system and then sent a copy of that text back to the issuer.  Only when we received confirmation from the issuer that the content was complete and accurate did we send out the notification to the world.

In that “pre-digital” world, we acted like a notary, validating content before it was published to protect the issuer, the end-recipient and all parties in the distribution chain.  This week, a service provider in the Corporate Actions sector told me that they had validated a set of corporate actions notifications received against the original notifications created by the issuers.  8% of all notifications received were factually inaccurate and 25% were incomplete or missing.  So – how would the end-users of corporate actions services be aware of that problem, and what could they do about addressing it?

In today’s digital world, a “digital notary” provides the kind of service that’s needed.  Just as a legal notary establishes and certifies the validity and completeness of a physical document, a digital notary does the same for electronic data content.  That helps an issuer of a corporate action notification to ensure that what the world receives is what was originally issued, completely and accurately.  It enables the Investor Relations firms involved to protect both their clients and themselves.  And it enables end-recipients of notifications to validate that what they received is a complete and accurate version of what the issuer sent out originally.

I’ve just had to use a legal notary to certify the contents of a physical document, because people who receive that document will be making important business decisions based on its contents.  Are you using a digital notary to validate corporate actions notifications?