Investor Communications Japan (ICJ), a joint venture between fintech Broadridge Financial Solutions and the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE), will launch a digital vote execution service to accelerate end-to-end automation of proxy voting for Japanese listed firms.

The expanded service aims to increase voting participation by international investors and enable the Japanese market to improve corporate governance practices.

It will enable participating companies to obtain greater transparency of the voting intentions of investors and local sub-custodians to reduce risk and complexity from their operations.

“We continue to use our global expertise to ensure the ICJ platform provides market-leading solutions to improve the proxy voting life cycle for corporate governance events,” says ICJ president Shigeo Imakiire. “Japanese issuers participating in ICJ are providing institutional investors with faster access to meeting materials, expanded voting deadlines, and accelerated voting capability.”

In last year’s proxy season in Japan, 1,654 companies listed on the TSE participated in the ICJ platform, representing 90% of the companies in that market and 98% by market capitalization. Foreign institutional investors represented 81% of the total number of voting rights held by overseas shareholders.