GENERAL MEETING
PROXY VOTING
ON DISTRIBUTED LEDGER
Product Requirements v2.1
November 2017
2
OVERVIEW
This document was prepared by the CSD Working Group on DLT in collaboration with
SWIFT to define the product requirements for the e-voting solution based on Distributed
Ledger Technology (DLT) shared by CSDs operating in different and diverse markets.
The members of the CSD Working Group on DLT are:
NSD (Russia)
Strate (South Africa)
SIX Securities Services (Switzerland)
Nasdaq (Nordic)
DCV (Chile)
Caja de Valores (Argentina)
SWIFT is contributing to the CSD Working Group from a Standards perspective with a
view to ensure alignment with ISO 20022.
The adaptation of the requirements to the French market has been done with the major
contribution of SLIB.
This document is written with several premises in mind, in which all members of the
working group firmly believe:
Distributed ledger foundation. Modern DLT platforms address provable transparency
and finality and mitigate risks, enabling business benefits not possible with current
systems.
Locally applicable solution. Our solution aims to offer enough flexibility so that it can
be implemented independently on most local markets without compromising its potential
for global integration. Each local solution must be able to define its own architecture and
details of operation if it follows the general common principles.
Focus on the global context. DLT solutions offer maximum value when they are used
by all involved parties, locally and cross-border. Our solution emphasizes requirements
shared by participant markets, so that cross-border integration of local systems compliant
with these requirements does not compromise the integrity of the distributed ledger.
Alignment with market standards. DLT solutions are currently a novelty in the industry
and the key concern for adopting organizations is to ensure smooth transition in both
technological interoperability and the understanding of the processes and terms by the
stakeholders. Our solution aims at being aligned with the existing industry standards like
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ISO 20022 on both technical and conceptual levels so as to foster interoperability
amongst DLT solutions and with legacy systems including electronic messaging.
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CONTENTS
Overview
2
Contents
4
Introduction
5
Target Audience
5
Problem Statement
5
Objective
6
Document Structure
6
Alignment with the Industry Standards
6
Out of Scope
7
Functional Requirements
9
Functional Role Definitions
9
Process Flow
9
Minimal
Viable Product Requirements
11
Extensions Requirements
17
Trust Requirements
24
Disruption of the business process
25
Tampering with data
26
Compromising access to confidential data
27
Infrastructure failure
28
Data Entities In Distributed Ledger
29
General considerations
29
Access Rights Considerations
29
Alignment with the business layer of ISO 20022
30
Non-functional Requirements
32
Future Developments
33
Distribution and Contacts
34
5
INTRODUCTION
Target Audience
The working group expects that this document will be useful for the following groups of
people:
Product managers, architects and analysts in charge of corporate actions and
general meeting voting solutions;
Innovation managers and architects, looking for well-defined DLT use-cases and
requirements;
Standards managers and experts, looking to develop ways to standardize and
integrate DLT-based solutions.
We assume that the reader is familiar with the general meeting processes, ISO 20022
standards and has a basic understanding of DLT.
Problem Statement
Voting at general shareholder meetings is a process that involves many parties and is
subject to numerous risks. The administrator of the meeting must ensure that all voting
rights are issued correctly, are delivered to securely authenticated shareholders or their
authorized proxies and the votes are counted and reported correctly. In many countries
this process has been made partially digitized, but that does not eliminate many of these
risks.
The most prominent problems today are complexity of the processes involved in the
voting and lack of finality.
For major shareholders it is important that the voting process is streamlined and
transparent, the meeting results are reported precisely, quickly and with guaranteed
finality, so that they can rely on these results in a legally binding way.
For minority shareholders (mainly individuals) the problem is that they typically have to
go through complicated process to exercise their voting rights
–
there is no common and
easy way in all markets to vote or assign a reliable and controlled proxy. The value of
voting can be small for them. However smooth, easily accessible and reliable voting
process may encourage them to vote. Lack of a good predictable system prevents them
from doing it, reducing the turnout at the general meeting.