But the life of a company announcement doesn’t end with its publication. After its release, ASX, market participants and intermediaries would typically review and capture relevant information – including the important category of corporate actions such as dividends, entitlement offers, capital reorganisations and capital returns.

Industry players capture and use this data in their systems to support their own processes and services to customers. Investors also review information about an event to understand its potential impacts and help them make timely decisions.

At ASX, we capture information to support an event throughout its lifecycle. For example, we provide structured market information to market participants, basis of quotation changes for trading, and settlement support via CHESS (Clearing House Electronic Subregister System). The lifecycle may also end with the quotation of additional securities if an event aims to raise capital.

Across all these industry stakeholders, much of the analysis and data capture has involved manual processes.

But as the current environment brings more company announcements, market volatility and corporate activity, it’s not sustainable to continue processing information this way. Manual review and data capture is risky – it can be untimely and prone to error .

Digitising corporate event notification

At ASX, we have developed a strategy to pursue digitisation. And one of our efforts is to provide a more timely, informative and standardised notification service for corporate actions through our Corporate Actions STP (straight-through processing) project.

In the past, companies would announce an event across different formats, making subsequent reviews and analyses challenging. Sometimes, a company would miss announcing critical information or would set out a non-compliant timetable, which required ASX and market participants to reach out to the company for additional information or corrections. And if that extra information wasn’t provided through a company announcement, it became disparate and increased the risk of inaccuracies or data mismatches.

To address these issues, ASX developed the Corporate Actions STP solution in consultation with regulators, companies, and those who use this information such as custodians, market participants and investors. The solution is designed to digitise the notification process – from issuer announcement through to the delivery of information to the market – and create a single source of truth for corporate event information.

Speeding up process of announcing events through online forms

Companies now benefit from greater clarity in the ASX Listing Rules and the introduction of new online forms. They’ve had to adjust the way they announce certain events, go through several transition periods and provide more detailed information. But the benefits to them and the entire market far outweigh these adjustments – and with their help, we can make current processes even better.

Following the implementation of listing rule changes and online forms in June 2021, we’re happy to note that there are now 10 online forms available for companies. Six of them are directly related to corporate action announcements.

These forms come with many features such as the pre-population of known data and validation of information to make sure announcements comply with rules and standards. Companies also get a clear view of the minimum information required, as well as suggestions and warning messages where suitable.

The online forms process available on ASX Online includes workflows to cater for new, updated and cancelled events, and also the linking of certain events - for example a proposed capital raising through to its conclusion and issue of capital. Once a company completes an online form for market release, a PDF copy of the announcement is automatically generated.

ASX systems also automatically capture all the data that’s in the form. This then creates or updates corporate action and related security records, and sends them to other platforms such as Trade and CHESS, and to notification services. As a result, customers can now receive a rich and accurate notification in a global standard format within seconds of the announcement to market.

To minimise manual processing, the online forms ensure there’s no late or bad data. This reduces associated risks and costs of processing and avoids follow-up queries to companies.

Benefits to market stakeholders

For investors, receiving event information more quickly and in a standardised and comprehensive format helps them make more informed and timely investment decisions. Custodians, participants, information providers and other market stakeholders also benefit from an efficient and internationally standardised notification service, providing them with straight-through processing to improve their back-office operations and customer service.

Our straight-through processing capability now allows seamless event capture and management for about 93 per cent of the announced corporate action event volume, even during busy periods. This greatly reduces the manual workloads of our operations teams that support companies, given that ASX processes close to 5,000 corporate action events each year for listed and quoted securities. As a result, these teams have been able to attend to more complex events more quickly.

A global trend that benefits all participants

The objectives of our Corporate Actions STP solution are not unique to Australia. Nearly all markets are trying to create efficiencies, particularly in converting published information into machine-readable data. They are looking for effective ways to ingest, process and distribute that data, including by adopting global standards to share it.

This is a particularly welcome trend for intermediaries such as custodians that operate internationally. It helps them to serve customers across diverse markets more efficiently.

At ASX, we believe we have developed a world-leading solution that lowers inherent risks for all participants. We’ve achieved this by simplifying, standardising and removing manual steps in sharing information and in downstream processes.

Learn more about ASX’s real time Corporate Actions service