Digital investor platform Proximity raises $20.5m

Digital investor communications platform Proximity has raised $20.5 million from a consortium of investors in the banking and financial community including BNY Mellon, Citi, Clearstream, Computershare, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, J.P. Morgan, and State Street. The platform was developed within Citi’s Institutional Clients Group innovation laboratory in Israel, which is led by Amit Baruch. While Proximity, which is now an independent startup, will have its commercial headquarters in London, its development center will be in Tel Aviv.

The newly formed global industry-led consortium is committed to delivering Proxymity’s vision of enhancing the investor communications ecosystem and providing significant benefits to the global market. Proxymity will use the funds to scale the platform and team, build out its investor communications platform, and expand its services to a wider client base and geography.

Proxymity’s services include a real-time and fully transparent electronic proxy voting platform, which is especially valuable amid current remote working arrangements. The platform provides post-meeting vote confirmation and gives investors up to nine more days per meeting to research and vote. Proxymity also offers a shareholder disclosure platform, which automates shareholder ID requests in industry compliant formats without the need for any manual intervention. Given upcoming regulatory changes, these features position Proxymity as an ideal solution to aid financial institutions and compliance teams around the world.

"We’re extremely proud of what Proxymity has achieved so far within Citi since we developed the platform in 2017. To date, Proxymity has supported over 3,000 shareholder meetings and, after successful pilots, we’ve fully launched the platform in the UK, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, and Australia, as well as a pilot in Spain," said Dean Little, CEO and Co-Founder of Proxymity. "The establishment of this strong consortium is a vote of confidence in Proxymity’s future and overall vision and we look forward to growing the team and suite of products to deliver Proxymity to more institutions around the world."

Published by Globes, Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on May 7, 2020