Proxymity's electronic proxy voting solution for issuers, intermediaries and institutional investors provides post-meeting vote confirmation. For strict compliance with regulations such as the Shareholder Rights Directive (SRD II), which is advocating message standardisation in shareholder voting, Proxymity’s solutions use industry standard digital formats (ISO 20022).

This means that as the 2021 shareholder meeting season gets underway with a wider participation being permitted through electronic means, Deutsche Bank - via Proxymity’s platform - offers clients these ISO2022 formats across 10 markets: Portugal, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

Deutsche Bank clients will also benefit from Proxymity’s vote execution directly to an issuer or issuer agent in Portugal, Netherlands, Belgium and France, with real-time “golden source” meeting announcements flowing directly from issuers to clients of Deutsche Bank.

Paul Maley, Deutsche Bank Global Head of Securities Services, said: “We invested in Proxymity last year because we believed that the time was right to transform the industry with new digital solutions for asset servicing and custody that remove the need for manual operations, making all participants more efficient and responsive. We are pleased to see rapid progress from this exciting fintech solution and look forward to extending these benefits to all our clients.”

Deutsche Bank is part of a global consortium that invested in Proxymity after recognising the advantages of an industry-backed solution for the market at large, in light of automation trends in corporate governance and the growing focus of global regulation on digital transparency.

Addressing the ever-increasing interest in ESG, votes sent electronically remove the need to travel to meetings in person, and dramatically reduce paper waste. These direct environmental impacts clearly demonstrate the value of digital transformation of the industry during and beyond the Covid-19 pandemic.

Jonathan Smalley, Co-Founder and COO of Proxymity, said: “We are proud of the outstanding effort from both the Deutsche Bank and Proxymity teams in ensuring the solution is available to clients this season. With cooperation from Deutsche Bank and our consortium of global partners we continue to accelerate our mission to provide unprecedented transparency and efficiency for the market.”