Sharesies to offer users online voting for NZX-listed companies

Leighton Roberts, one of three CEOs at Sharesies. Photo / Supplied

Sharesies is to offer its users the ability to vote online on proposals put forward by NZX-listed companies they own shares in for the first time.

Up until now the custodial model used by the online trading company has meant that its users couldn't vote on resolutions put forward at company annual general meetings.

Sharesies holds investors' money and investments "on bare trust" which means Sharesies Nominee company holds shares on an investor's behalf.

Leighton Roberts, Sharesies co-CEO, said it had offered voting to its users for some big corporate actions in the past such as the takeover of Z Energy.

But it was a manual paper-based process.

Now it had designed a corporate actions engine which had digitised the process and made it much simpler.

Each investor will get one vote for every whole share they own - or in proportion to the fractional amount of shares they own.

Sharesies users will either see an upcoming vote label on the investment in their portfolio or receive an email about it.

If they tap on the vote now option it will give them more information about what they are voting for.

Sharesies will collate the votes for each resolution and submit them as a proxy vote ahead of the meeting taking place. Fractional ownership votes would be combined to create whole votes.

So far it is only available to NZX-listed companies but will expand to Australian and US-listed companies in the future.

Roberts said it didn't have a timeframe for this at the moment.

"It has been asked for by users - particularly for those more material ones - there is a certain type of investor much more interested in voting and it's something they have been quite loud on."

However, Sharesies users still won't be able to attend the AGM in person.

These meetings require a common shareholder number (CSN) when attending, and all Sharesies investors use a shared CSN.

But meeting attendance was something Sharesies was exploring, the company noted.

Sharesies has around 600,000 users in New Zealand and Australia.