Broadridge Financial Solutions, a provider of investor communications and technology-driven solutions, in collaboration with banking giants J.P. Morgan, Northern Trust and Banco Santander has announced the successful completion of a blockchain pilot in order to improve the global proxy vote transparency and analytics.

The pilot marks as Broadridge’s first application of blockchain technology and adapts distributed ledger technology capabilities to offer transparency and provide daily insight into vote progress throughout the issuer's proxy voting period.

“This pilot demonstrates Broadridge's commitment to developing innovative technology solutions to enhance transparency in the global proxy voting process for the mutual benefit of all stakeholders, ultimately improving corporate governance for all. We believe blockchain will drive increased quality and efficiency in the voting chain by reducing complexity that exists within the process today,” Vijay Mayadas, Senior Vice President and Global Head of Corporate Strategy at Broadridge, stated.

The blockchain application makes sure role-based access to voting data with the use of cryptography and smart contract technology and it is built on an Ethereum blockchain platform.

The blockchain pilot was tested with the support of a corporate issuer's annual general meeting (AGM) that saw participation of Santander Investment, the issuer's agent. The pilot was run alongside with the AGM and the blockchain was used to create a ‘shadow’ digital register of the proxy voting taking place in the traditional model.

“After piloting this blockchain-based platform with Broadridge, we see that proxy voting makes an interesting case where distributed ledgers and smart contracts can add transparency and efficiency to financial services, to the benefit of our corporate and institutional clients,” Julio Faura, head of the Blockchain Lab at Banco Santander, mentioned.