Image credit: Proxymity
Proxymity, a UK-based digital investor communications platform, has secured €27.5M in a Series B round of funding from an existing consortium of members. Since its launch in April 2020, the company has seen significant growth for its platform and the second-round investment will help the company further scale its product.
Fund utilisation
With the current round, Proxymity has now raised a total of €45M from two funding rounds. Dean Little, Co-Founder and CEO of Proxymity says the new funding will be used to further expand their product and market footprint. Since its launch, Proxymity has provided digital access to over 12,000 meetings in 29 markets worldwide.
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It will use the new funds to tap into new markets by drawing on the platform’s capabilities to “deliver digital global investor communications”. Digitisation, regulation and globalisation are some of the major trends in digital investor relations and Proxymity is well placed to handle the first major trend in this segment.
While Proxymity is backed by some of the world’s largest financial institutions, digital investor communications remained uncharted territory. With digitisation now becoming part of investor relations, digital distribution has become indispensable. Proxymity has seen this change from the front seat and with the funding, it is looking to become a major player in digital global investor communications.
“We’re delighted to announce this successful round of fundraising, both in terms of the confidence our investors have shown in us, and in accessing new funds to fuel our significant global momentum. We continue to work closely with all our founding consortium members, and together, the Proxymity team is delivering on our vision, changing the industry ecosystem for the better,” Little says.
Proxymity: What you need to know
Proxymity was born out of Citi’s D10X accelerator programme that supports the creation, development and launch of new concepts by Citi employees. Founded by Dean Little and Jonathan Smalley, two veterans of Citi’s custody business with over 30 years combined industry experience, they saw an opportunity to reinvent proxy voting within the existing corporate governance framework.
They started Proxymity with the goal of bringing “unprecedented efficiency and transparency” to the market. Even though Citi backed the program, Little and Smalley felt that the platform should be backed by the industry as a whole and not by one company. This vision led to joint investment by some of the world’s largest financial institutions that turned Proxymity into an independent business.
Proxymity currently offers two main products – Proxymity PV and Proxymity ID. Proxymity PV is a fully digital proxy voting solution that allows meeting data, votes and more to be sent and received in real-time. Proximity ID, on the other hand, is a fully automated shareholder disclosure solution aiding regulatory compliance.
The platform was first introduced in the UK in 2018 after a collaborative pilot partnership with Computershare. With its ability to connect different issuers, intermediaries and investors through a proprietary digital network, Proxymity brings real-time transparency into the voting process and automates responses to shareholder ID requests.
The Proxymity platform also supports solutions that are compliant with all the security and data protection guidelines specified under the European Union’s second Shareholder Rights Directive (SRD II) regulation, and shareholder rights. It has a UK-based HQ in London and customer hubs in Manchester, UK and Melbourne, Australia. The company will continue to maintain its technology and R&D team in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Investors
Proxymity counts some of the biggest names in the world of banking, financial services and investment banking services as its investors. The second-round investment stage saw the original consortium investors BNY Mellon, Citi, Computershare, Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Börse, J.P. Morgan, and State Street participate and support Proxymity’s vision.
BNY Mellon and J.P. Morgan are the most recent investors. The company says this funding round shows commitment from global institutions to invest in Proxymity’s vision to enhance the global investor communications ecosystem.
Caroline Butler, Global Head of Custody, Tax & Network, BNY Mellon Asset Servicing, says, “Proxymity is changing how investor communications work by connecting issuers and investors in a transparent and more efficient digital ecosystem. We are excited to continue this collaboration with Proxymity and our industry partners as its success will be beneficial to the industry as a whole, which is BNY Mellon’s objective in all of our consortium investments.”
“J.P. Morgan has been an active partner and investor in the Proxymity vision, and we’re excited to be part of the company’s next stage of growth. We continue to utilise the Proxymity platform, helping to ensure it achieves scale for digital communications throughout the industry ecosystem, benefiting clients and supporting corporate governance,” says Hannah Elson, Head of Global Custody, J.P. Morgan.
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