Hargreaves Lansdown launched a digital service through which customers can vote at shareholder meetings.

Platform allows customers to vote as shareholders. Source: Pixabay.com

Customers of the UK’s largest retail investment platform can now vote and apply for meetings online. The new system will replace the manual one, which used more traditional tools, including email, web chat, or phone calls.

Tom Lee, head of the trading offers department of the platform, said that currently in the UK about 50% of the shares of local companies belong to individual retail investors, among whom there is no absolute agreement on several issues. He also drew attention to the underestimation of the problem of different approaches to achieving maximum efficiency in commercial activities.

The new system, managed by technical services provider Broadridge, facilitates the voting process for Hargreaves’ 1.7 million customers, who can invest in about 5,800 UK and EU shares on the platform.

Such solutions are not widespread, but the practice of their application already exists. AJ Bell and Fidelity International platforms have previously offered online voting services to their clients.

Two years ago, Interactive Investor set up and created a system for notifying users about voting. The company has recorded a significant increase in the number of processed votes and plans to add voting options to its mobile application.

Hargreaves Lansdown customers will not receive email alerts at this stage.

In recent years, shareholder groups have often expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that the nominee voting system does not allow for solving a number of issues, including corporate remuneration and changing the company’s charter.

Chris Bredin, a specialist at the consulting company Lang Cat Financial, said that standard voting methods do not provide investors with complete information about the course of decision-making.

As we have reported earlier, Japanese firm launched blockchain-based e-voting protocol.