President’s Report to Members - August 2018

Dear Member

When I wrote to you last month, amongst other things, I alerted you to some important Thought Leadership initiatives that were being published.  I am pleased to say that an additional paper on the impact of technology on the company secretary has now been posted to the icsaglobal website. 

I commend this thought provoking paper to you: Futureproofing: Technological Innovation, the Company Secretary and Implications for Corporate Governance. This paper examines how Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Blockchain technology are disrupting the way we as company secretaries work…now and well into the future. It is important that as professionals we understand the impact that changes in technology will bring.  It is important that we embrace them and not resist them. To embrace will depend upon how much we understand the changes. Access the paper here.

This paper on technology compliments the two papers already published:

• 21^st Century Annual General Meeting: bringing value all around – consider it now - the future of the Annual General Meeting (AGM) has been a focus of some concern as declining attendance and voting at AGMs continue. This paper and instructive video describe how technology can offer a solution to improve shareholder engagement. Access the paper and video here.
• Shareholder Engagement: The State of play - a research project with support from the OECD. This paper examines the impact of Stewardship Codes and other policy interventions in ten jurisdictions. Access the paper here.

Annual General Meeting

The formal Notice of Meeting and supporting documents were despatched to all members on 1 August 2018 for the AGM being held in Toronto, Canada on 19 September 2018.  The meeting seeks member approval, inter alia, to change the name of the Institute to The Chartered Governance Institute. 

I have written to you previously about the importance of this proposal.

As The Chartered Governance Institute, we can more accurately convey the breadth of our membership; we can represent our profession with stronger and clearer messages; we can raise the profile of the organisation and our members, and we can highlight the fact that we are unique in the commitment and capability that we all bring to the delivery of excellence in governance.

I must also stress that the proposal to change the Institute’s name will only apply to the Institute at the ‘international’ level. It will be up to each Division as to whether they change their local name. I am sure that your own Division will be engaging with its members on this.

We have a dedicated section on the website at www.icsaglobal.org to explain these changes further.  I encourage you to visit the website so you can find out more about why Council advocates the changes delineated.  

Finally, the meeting will be streamed live on the internet so members from different parts of the world can participate in the meeting.  Instructions for joining are also on the website at www.icsaglobal.org.

Council respectfully asks all members to support these changes and if you cannot attend the meeting, then I urge you to lodge your proxy so that your voice can be heard.