Automic claims top share registry spot

Perth-founded Automic Group has become the top share registry provider in Australia after transferring the data from Advanced Share Registry, a business it acquired for $32 million.

Automic Group announced it had moved 180 companies from Nedlands-based Advanced Share Registry, which it acquired in December, onto its share registry platform during the weekend.

The transfer brings the total number of companies on Automic’s registry to 750 of the 2,300 trading companies on the ASX.

While Automic claims to have the largest number of ASX companies, its clients tend to be relatively small.

Competitors such as Computershare, Boardroom and Link Market Services provide share registry services for larger companies.

According to Automic, the transition of 180 listed and unlisted entities contained 1.6 million shareholdings and more than 10 million transactions, and is one of the biggest performed in Australia.

The transition allows companies and shareholders access to a full range of related capital markets and investor-related services through cloud-native and API-enabled offering, the company said.

Automic Group chief executive Andrew Wilson said the company claimed the top spot from legacy Australian share registries after only eight years in operation because of its modern technology systems.

“We saw that ASX-listed businesses found that older system structures inherently made it increasingly difficult to meet their governance and security requirements in the face of accelerating regulation change, ever-increasing cybersecurity threats and rapidly evolving investor service expectations,” he said.

“Automic was never hamstrung by legacy technology systems, as we designed and created Australia’s first and only cloud-native and API-enabled single registry platform of scale.

“This modern architecture enhances data management quality, user experience, performance and security and allows us to implement improvements quickly.

“As a result, it provides industry-leading client company service, shareholder experience and employee share plans with all the advanced services in the one platform under one login.”

Mr Wilson said businesses needed to navigate the market more effectively than they used to amid an ongoing volatile environment and evolving stakeholder needs.

“So, we are the only registry in the market with a holistic and actively involved capital market consultancy to help our clients build better relationships with their stakeholders during challenging times,” he said.

“These services include fund registry, analytics, employee share plans, investor services, corporate actions, CFO advisory, company secretarial, ESG, investor relations, communications, and media relations.”

Automic was founded in Perth in 2012 and has expanded to Sydney and Melbourne.