Broadridge Financial Solutions (NYSE:BR) today announced that it has introduced enhanced services to ProxyEdge, a proxy voting tool designed for institutional investors and investment companies.
This enhanced version of ProxyEdge features fully-integrated vote recommendations and research by Nordic Investor Services (NIS), a provider of Scandinavian independent research services to institutional investors. ProxyEdge users will now have an additional choice of recommendations, providing them with a new level of efficiency and choice to the local European markets.
Broadridge plans to feature NIS recommendations because of their well-regarded independent research on corporate governance and corporate social responsibility issues. As each country has different corporate governance cultures, laws and codes, Broadridge aims to offer high quality recommendations by providing its clients with local research based on pertinent and specific knowledge of regional conditions.
It is critical that investors have the tools necessary to help ensure that the hundreds of thousands of proxies they are responsible for voting each year are voted thoughtfully, accurately and in a timely fashion. ProxyEdge users will have the ability to execute ballots in accordance with standard Nordic recommendations. The integration of Nordic analysis into ProxyEdge is part of Broadridge's ongoing efforts to give clients better, more flexible solutions for managing their entire proxy compliance process.
"This is the logical next evolution of ProxyEdge's existing integrated recommendation service," said Geoff de Lesseps, Senior Vice President of Business Development, Broadridge. "Allowing institutions to choose from a variety of standard guidelines that meet their policy requirements, or providing them with a new way to implement a set of custom guidelines, gives more market participants the ability to consistently and efficiently meet their voting objectives."
"It is a great pleasure for us to be able to provide our voting recommendations to Broadridge clients through ProxyEdge. We hope to provide international institutional investors with a good and efficient basis for their decision-making, especially in difficult markets that are not always in their immediate neighborhood," said Helena Levander, Managing Director of Nordic Investor Services.