Citi Securities Services, Citi Group’s equities trading service, has launched new a digital proxy voting service for its Australian and New Zealand arms, enabling investors to send votes to issuers or agents in real-time.

Citi Australia and New Zealand confirmed a new deal with Proxymity, a digital investment communications platform developer originally developed and operated by Citigroup in London (now run independently), to roll out its Vote Connect Total service. The Antipodean deployment follows similar rollouts across Citi’s European arms.

The platform enables both the digital confirmation of votes cast during meetings, as well as the publishing of ‘golden source’ – or single source of truth – meeting announcements and agendas directly from issuers to investors.

As part of the deal, Citi notes that Proxymity will manage the full life cycle of proxy voting services for its Securities Services.

“Proxymity’s digital-native platform has been built on highly scalable technology which allows secure end-to-end connectivity between issuers, issuer agents, custodians, and investors, providing transparency to all participants in the proxy voting chain,” Citi said in a statement.

Mark England, head of securities services for Citi in Australia and New Zealand and APAC co-head of sales for securities services, said the ability to replace manual processes with “modern digital automation” has “transformed” investor communications.

“Our long-term partnership with Proxymity reflects our commitment to providing the most innovative solutions to improve client experience and create efficiency in the market,” he added.

Dean Little, co-founder and chief executive of Proxymity added: “ By enabling them to extend Proxymity’s solutions to their blue-chip clients in Australia and New Zealand, together we’ve delivered another great milestone for Citi clients in the APAC region”.