BST Awards 2021: Best buy-side corporate actions platform—IHS Markit  

OVERVIEW

IHS Markit’s Corporate Actions platform is a corporate actions processing solution designed to automate the corporate actions lifecycle for all asset classes and markets through an exception and risk-driven workflow. 

Typical user-firms range from small hedge funds to large asset and wealth managers, across securities, derivatives and synthetic assets.

IHS Markit Financial Services grew by 10% in Q1, 2021, and 9% in Q2, 2021, on a quarter-by-quarter basis. The corporate actions business expanded even faster to more than 200 clients across all regions with new offerings like its Proxy, SaaS and Agent Validation Service. 

WHAT’S NEW

IHS Markit developed a low-code and configurable user experience with new risk and control dashboards for management of exception-based workflows, with additional graphical tools to help users understand immediate and longer-term priorities. It released an enhanced API suite and an AI-driven front-office servicing chatbot. It also unveiled a new cloud-hosted SaaS solution designed to allow buy-side firms to onboard as quickly as four months. The EU’s Shareholder Rights Direction II requirements for shareholder disclosure and communication across meeting lifecycles is supported in the firm’s Integrated Proxy solution, while the ISO 20022 format for shareholder identification and proxy voting is also supported. Finally, the firm unveiled its Agent Validation managed service, enabling clients to outsource their custodian corporate actions validation with the IHS Markit MCA issuer data to provide them with a specific golden record. 

WHAT’S TO COME 

IHS Markit will enhance its post-trade platform to become what it describes as a “one-stop platform” for traditional and digital asset custody, enabling the safekeeping and servicing of crypto assets alongside traditional assets. It will enhance its corporate actions data coverage on open-ended funds in the US, UK, Ireland, Luxembourg and Brazil, and it will expand its post-trade platform to support institutional brokerage and more complex transaction processing and flows on equity derivatives.

WHY THEY WON

Straight-through processing is the corporate actions Holy Grail, and IHS Markit has provided a low-code, configurable platform with enhanced APIs and chatbots for better client interactions. The platform is cloud-hosted, lowering TCO. In 2021, it added services for proxy voting and to allow the outsourcing of agent validations, supported by 500 specialists around the world.