E-commerce: Paperwork may be too popular to scrap
yet
Hightech advances in electronic voting could be stalled slightly this week because pension fund investors like their paperwork too
much.
A working party including the National Association of Pension Funds
(NAPF) is to meet Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) officials today to
discuss the future of evoting at company AGMs.
The meeting follows a
consultation paper put out by the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and
Administrators (ICSA), Electronic Communications for Companies: A Discussion on
Best Practice.
However, the working party believes there may be reluctance
by institutional investors to cut down on paperwork.
"We are advised that many institutions may still prefer to receive the
full printed annual report and accounts which can be more easily annotated and
scribbled on," the group said.
Also in the working party was Manifest Voting Agency, an
institutional voting and corporate governance company.
The ICSA believes professional investors would be the principal users of
evoting and that institutional shareholders would be the main drivers as
they will also be the biggest beneficiaries.
The ICSA warned that private
shareholders will prevent companies making financial savings when electronic
voting comes into force.
"There are unlikely to be many financial savings by companies until the
bulk of private shareholders elect to use electronic communications thus
reducing the need to print so many hard copies," the ICSA said.
Although, companies would have the initial costs of setting up and
maintaining a system, the ICSA pointed out that savings on printing and postage
of the annual report and accounts could be up to £10 per shareholder in
the company.
David Gould, director of investment services at the NAPF, said: "This
offers a speedier and improved way to interact with shareholders and could even
lead to straw polls on company policy."
He continued: "It [the document] is
a useful addition to the jigsaw to make ecommerce more acceptable to
companies and shareholders."
Simon Miller, Pensions Week
8 May, 2000
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