SSA conference roundup

The Shareholder Services Association (SSA) conference, held July 16-19, highlighted challenges issuers face when dealing with shareholder needs, including stock plan administration, dividend distribution and stock transfer services.

In her opening remarks, SSA president Karen Danielson said the organization would focus on contributing comments on new rules governing the proxy fees companies pay to have their proxy materials distributed, strengthening an investor education program on the importance of proxy voting for retail investors, and monitoring the process issuers use to select their transfer agents.

Jon Ciciola, director of asset services for the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, said his organization would be pushing forward with its initiatives to promote intra-day settlement finality, to shorten the settlement cycle for stock transfers and the dematerialization of physical securities certificates.

John Buonomo, senior vice president of regulatory and issuer services for American Stock Transfer & Trust, and Mary Rose Cascaes, executive vice president and COO of the Registrar and Transfer Company, alerted issuers to their new obligation to notify ‘unresponsive payees’ who fail to cash dividend checks under amendments to SEC Rule 17Ad-17. Issuers must now do a separate mailing to shareholders who have been identified as having not cashed dividend checks, telling them to come forward so those checks can be replaced. 

During the panel on unclaimed property, Keane national managing director Valerie Jundt said companies must ensure they are ‘released and indemnified’ before they exercise any actions regarding unclaimed properties: ‘Whatever you say you are going to do in your unclaimed property policy, make sure you do it. You must show you are trying to comply with the law.’ 

Jennifer Borden, president and general counsel of Unclaimed Property Recovery & Reporting, said issuers should challenge rules when necessary. ‘You have to ensure the state statute is lawful,’ she warned. ‘If not, you still are liable if you do something that is not lawful, even if you were instructed to do so.’ 

Jim Doody, a director in Ryan’s abandoned and unclaimed property group, said the best way to avoid an audit is to ‘do a self-review and try to anticipate what the regulators might do.’ Jackie Walding, director of shareholder services at Prudential Financial, advised issuers to create a ‘master death file’ to keep track of deceased shareholders properly, and Tamara Salmon, senior associate counsel of the Investment Company Institute, said her organization is working on ways to get states to remove ‘written communication from shareholder’ requirements from escheatment laws in New York and other states. 

During the panel on compliance and risk, Rick Johnson, chief compliance officer at Computershare, suggested that some compliance rules that apply to banks may soon be extended to other types of companies. Wells Fargo Shareowner Services senior vice president and head of operations Katie Sevcik and Wells Fargo compliance manager Kerrie Roach both emphasized ‘tone at the top’ as a major component of keeping information on risk issues flowing throughout the business. They each said transfer agents would be scrutinized much more going forward with Sevcik highlighting a key question from regulators: ‘Do transfer agents provide appropriate services without offering investment advice that would require them to register as a broker dealer?’.

Finally, in a session on proxy voting trends which feature comments from Georgeson managing director Chris Dowd, Sherry Moreland, chief operating officer of Median Communications, Mario Passudetti, managing director, global product management at Bank of New York Mellon and Innisfree managing director Scott Winter, it was suggested that solutions from the industry working group examining the proxy voting system may be ready for implementation by the 2014 proxy season.