Sherry Moreland is the president and COO of Mediant, which delivers investor communications solutions to banks, brokers, corporate issuers and funds that are driven by leading technology and strict compliance with industry regulations.
Russ Prince: Who is Mediant?
Sherry Moreland: Mediant is spearheading the digital transformation of investor communications. We are a leading provider of investor communications technology and technology-enabled solutions to banks, brokers, corporate issuers and funds.
Our solutions are driven by advanced technology and strict compliance with industry regulations, which allows clients to balance innovation with requirements. We enable banks and brokers to effectively manage all potential touchpoints within the investor communications lifecycle—from proxy statements and prospectuses to voluntary corporate actions. We provide corporate issuers with turnkey proxy processing, and we empower mutual funds, REITs, and insurance companies with full-service, end-to-end proxy solutions.
Prince: How are current industry trends impacting advisors, brokers and investors?
Moreland: There has been a fundamental change within the industry over the past few years. The number of younger and more diverse investors accustomed to all things digital has spiked—resulting in a paradigm shift.
For example, a passive “audience” experience has now become an active “user/consumer” exchange. Communications between issuers and investors, and advisors and their clients, have become increasingly interactive due to mobile apps and social media. Instead of the passive investors of yesterday who only receive information via postal mail, today’s investors have the power to control, choose, define and comment on information and communications, in real time. As we have seen with the rise of ESG/impact investing, today’s investors want to make a positive difference in the country, and the world, through their investments—and they want to know that the companies in which they invest share their values.
Additionally, mono-media has evolved into omni-media. Paper-based communication persists in the proxy industry, for reasons of tradition, familiarity and beliefs about best practices. The Covid-19 pandemic showed that digital communication can be more effective at engaging shareholders, especially when issuers and brokers embrace multiple media channels and platforms. Omni-media means giving shareholders the information they want, when they want it, on their preferred device. In other words, the investor communications industry needs to be able to engage investors where, when and how they want.
Also, periodic, non-real-time communication has become continuous and real time. Issuers and brokers that limit communication to traditional documents, whether paper-based or email, will be increasingly ignored by today’s shareholders.
In a recent survey Mediant conducted of public companies examining the evolving nature of retail investor engagement, having continuous communication with shareholders throughout the year was by far the biggest engagement challenge. They are used to live interactions and constant, 24/7 availability. Technology is making continuous and real-time communications easier, more flexible and more affordable.
Furthermore, some large retail brokerage firms have been ending their discretionary voting practices, making it more difficult for issuers to achieve the quorum required for official shareholder meetings and actions to take place. This means that brokers can no longer vote on behalf of shareholders for auditor ratification and other routine matters. And, this change now affects the issuers, as they need to find ways to engage their shareholders to ensure they vote, as well as put pressure on the brokers to educate their clients on the voting process and necessity of voting.
Prince: Tell me about the new product you are releasing for investment managers.
Moreland: At Mediant we are consistently innovating game-changing technologies for strengthening our end-to-end investor communications ecosystem.
We recently released our MIC Wealth Manager platform, which we developed to enable investment managers to streamline the management of proxy voting, shareholder communications and corporate action elections online. Manual processes, repetitive workflows, logging into multiple applications and monitoring time-sensitive events consume the time investment managers have to spend with clients. We built MIC Wealth Manager to eliminate these impediments and improve the investor communications experience for both investment managers and their clients.
The platform is fully integrated with Institutional Shareholder Services, Glass-Lewis and other proxy advisory firms. Managers with voting authority can save time by voting multiple accounts via a single ballot, and managers can receive automated proxy voting reports with real-time data.
So far, hundreds of U.S. investment managers are utilizing the MIC Wealth Manager platform.
Within the ecosystem, managers can view an inventory of all distributed communications, and the accounts that received each one. They can also easily look up an account to review received documents prior to speaking with the client. In addition, MIC Wealth Manager helps managers take care of their clients by proactively alerting them to voting deadlines and upcoming meetings. Furthermore, MIC ReOrg Manager, which is embedded within MIC Wealth Manager, automates the capture of corporate actions and enables advisors to easily manage offers.
Mediant has the only integrated technology platform covering the entire shareholder communications process. This enables us to easily address pain points in the process for investment managers―as well as banks, brokers and corporate issuers and funds. MIC Wealth Manager is a communications ecosystem creating opportunities for managers to take action more easily on real-time information—significantly strengthening engagement while reducing time and costs.
Russ Alan Prince is the executive director of Private Wealth magazine and one of the leading authorities in the private wealth industry. He consults with family offices, the wealthy, fast-tracking entrepreneurs and select professionals. Connect with him on LinkedIn.com.
