Equiniti ezine | May 2011

EZINE > may 2011 inside this issue: Webcast Peter Swabey gives his view on some of the recent 'hot topics' for company secretaries the partnership approach How Equiniti has helped BT deliver innovation, flexibility and cost-efficiency making the right contacts We take a look at the latest stats to see how our Contact Centre is performing sharing the benefits How streamlining your shareholder base can raise thousands of pounds for charity page 7: Find out how the

National Milk Records has raised over ÂŁ5,000 for charity

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Hot topics

Peter Swabey gives his view on some of the recent 'hot topics' for company secretaries

Webcast: company secretary round-up

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bt case study > on page 3

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Bt Case study

BT’s approach to business is to develop strong partnerships with its suppliers. Francis O’Mahony from BT explains the benefits that have come from partnership working with Equiniti solutions

The partnership approach The days when BT was largely seen as an organisation that ‘put the phone lines in’ have long gone. Aside from the plethora of services it now provides, the company presents itself to big business as a ‘partner’ delivering expertise, innovation and solutions. It’s therefore encouraging that, in terms of its own suppliers, BT very much practises what it preaches.

Although Equiniti has been working closely with BT for many years, that relationship was cemented at the turn of the year by BT awarding Equiniti a new long-term share registration contract. Last year, Equiniti was also appointed to create a portal for BT’s employee share plans.

Explaining the share registration contract award, Francis O’Mahony, Head of Employee Share Plans and Share Registration at BT, placed the emphasis very much on the ‘P’ word. “We wanted a ‘partnership’ way of working, not a master-servant relationship,”

he says. “We were very interested by their explanation of how they could add value by being innovative, cost-effective and flexible.

We know with Equiniti that we genuinely can work in partnership; it’s very much a can-do attitude.”

Having held the contract before it was put out to tender, Equiniti faced fierce competition

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but the strength of its proposal persuaded BT to agree to a commercial deal of up to seven years. The new contract commenced at the beginning of the year and Equiniti is now looking at ways of reducing BT’s costs, boosting engagement with shareholders through e-shareholding and other business process outsourcing opportunities. “We’re continued on page 43

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BT case study keen to push the industry forward,” says Francis. “Together with Equiniti, we want to tackle issues such phasing out cheques and improving two-way communication with shareholders, so that the relationship is much stronger than simply sending out dividends and annual mailings.”

A close partnership has also developed on the employee share plan front. “One of the reasons for our decision was that Equiniti is so strongly committed to its ESP Portal solution,” says Francis. “One thing that was fundamental to our plans was the ability to have a single log-on, which was one of the first things we achieved through the ESP Portal, and which I think is a first in the industry. It enables people to view their share plans, corporate sponsored nominee and certificated shares on one page direct through the BT intranet without having to have a separate user ID and password to log in to the Equiniti site. We’re getting really good feedback on that and are working on lots of other ideas for streamlining the site and speeding up the service.”

Francis believes that Equiniti’s emphasis on understanding the client perspective has been important. “They held a number of focus groups with a lot of clients to understand

exactly what they needed. That brought a lot of benefits.”

Equiniti has also helped BT’s charitable efforts, collecting the small sums of spare cash that are often left over when shareholders leave BT’s dividend reinvestment plan. As part of the terms and conditions of the plan, shareholders agree that this money can go to charity – leading to a recent donation of £9,500 to BT’s chosen charity Childline.

“It’s a good news story for everyone involved,” says Francis.

If you would like more information: Please contact your relationship manager. For information about the ESP Portal, please contact John Daughtrey, Head of Employee Share Plans Business Development on 07921 105 629 or email John.Daughtrey@equiniti.com

One thing that was fundamental to our plans was the ability to have a single log-on, which was one of the first things we achieved through the ESP Portal, and which I think is a first in the industry

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contact centre > on page 5

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contact centre

The Equiniti Contact Centre has got the year off to a strong start, exceeding its Q1 targets across the board

Making the right contacts Despite ambitious targets for quality and customer service and the integration of a £100,000 software upgrade, the Equiniti Contact Centre team has enjoyed a very successful start to 2011.

The Contact Centre works to a service level target of answering 95% of all customer calls, and 80% of these within 20 seconds of the customer joining the queue. Both these targets were exceeded, with 84% of the 656,000 customer calls being answered within the 20 second window, and 97.7% of calls answered in total.

Fundamental to the Centre’s success was a comprehensive new training programme, which imparted more than 3,500 hours of training over the course of Q1, covering the areas of corporate induction, upskilling and regulation. Key achievements include the delivery of three registration inductions, one investment services induction, and a series of workshops to upskill contact centre staff on handling sensitive issues, such as

bereavement or complaints. A bespoke staff database storing details of key staff skills and development activities is accessible to all team managers.

The Centre has also recorded strong results in the fields of quality, compliance and customer service.

Quality

In Q1 the independent Call Quality and Coaching team helped to enhance the customer experience by completing: n 500 call quality observations, including full scoring and 1:1 feedback n 120 hours of ‘spot checking’ completed transactions n 25 hours of ‘mystery shopping’

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results for Q1 from 656,ooo customer calls received by equiniti Total calls answered

target

95%

actual

97.7%

Calls answered within 20 seconds

target

80%

actual

84% continued on page 6

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contact centre

Compliance

The Centre achieved 100% completion for all required compliance and regulatory reading for 2010. Every Group Leader and Team Leader successfully completed all monthly online compliance assessments, and attended an annual compliance review. This process includes: n 24 annual assessments, taking 50+ hours, to establish key understanding of compliance and impact on roles n Documented development requirements as part of staff reviews n Undertaking the Investment Administration Qualification to strengthen the Centre’s compliance profile (eight team leaders have completed this training so far)

Customer Service

The Contact Centre last year launched a customer survey to help drive forward enhanced service. The headline results of the survey are as follows: n 14,551 customer responses n 91% rate the Centre as ‘very good’ n Only 3% rate the Centre as ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’

If you would like more information: Please contact your relationship manager

Looking ahead, the Centre’s £100k software upgrade will enhance its ability to measure performance and boost efficiency, as well as providing time-saving innovations, such as automation of agent schedules and a self service process for holiday management.

“Quarter 1 has again shown that the Contact Centre can deliver the required performance and a quality service,” comments Director of Operations Sam Halford.

“All Contact Centre staff should be proud of this achievement.”

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share consolidation > on page 7

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share consolidation

In transforming a large and inactive shareholder base, NMR has also generated thousands of pounds for charity

Sharing the benefits It’s not often that you get something for nothing. Yet the National Milk Records (NMR) has achieved exactly this, raising £5,000 for charity, while at the same time streamlining an unwieldy shareholder base.

The large number of NMR shareholders goes back to the organisation’s beginnings, when it was formed out of its predecessor, the Milk Marketing Board, in 1997. With shares distributed to dairy farmers on the basis of their milk output, the result was a small number of shares held by a large number of shareholders – 28,000 in total. Due to the low overall share value, these shareholders remained largely inactive, and despite a number of attempts on the part of NMR to provide a market for the sale of their shares, the shares remained difficult to sell.

They decided a share consolidation would be the best course of action and, keen to ensure that the consolidation process would run as smoothly and efficiently as possible,

NMR is the UK's leading supplier of milk recording services NMR enlisted the help of Equiniti. To ensure minimal inconvenience for shareholders, the Company decided upon the introduction of a Capital Reorganisation and Offer for Subscription. The Capital Reorganisation consolidated batches of 320 Ordinary Shares

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of 10p into one Interim Share of £32.00, subdividing this in turn into 320 New Ordinary Shares of 10p. Shareholders with fewer than 320 shares could receive a fractional payment of 28p for each share previously owned subject to a minimum payment of £5 and these were purchased by a small number of active investors. Entitlements not exactly divisible by 320 shares were treated in a similar manner. Given that a number of smaller shareholders would be keen to retain their interest in the company, a parallel Offer for Subscription also allowed shareholders the option of subscribing for batches of 320 new Ordinary Shares at the price of 28p each.

This option was taken up by almost 800 shareholders.

As a result of the consolidation, NMR now has a smaller and more active shareholder base of just under 7,000 holders, with over 50% of these now held by six corporate or high net worth individual investors.

The process also generated £5,000 for continued on page 8

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share consolidation ShareGift – the share donation charity which aggregates and sells unwanted shareholdings, sharing the proceeds across a broad range of charitable causes.

“We have always offered our shareholders the option of donating their shares to ShareGift, where they historically hold a very small number of shares with very little value but that they want to dispose of,” says NMR finance director Chris Hughes.

“NMR shareholders have, in the past, been significant contributors to the charity.”

He adds: “Equiniti has proved to be a good choice of registrar. We have been given specific individuals to deal with for various issues under the excellent guidance of our Relationship Manager, Andrea McQuistan – for whom nothing is too much trouble and who is a calming influence when the going gets tough. They have been proactive in anticipating issues, and speedy and efficient in dealing with queries resulting from the consolidation. I look forward to working with Equiniti and their help in developing a more proactive relationship with our new smaller shareholder base.”

Since its launch in 1996, ShareGift has given away millions of pounds to hundreds

of different charities, covering a vast area of local, national and international work.

ShareGift can support any kind of charitable work, anywhere in the world, as long as the organisation receiving the donations has UK registered status.

David McIntosh, Head of Operations at ShareGift, said “We are delighted by this innovation on the part of NMR and Equiniti, which benefits ShareGift and the many charities we support. As always, we donate to charities suggested both by individual shareholders and by the Companies who work with us.”

Equiniti has proved to be a good choice of registrar.

We have been given specific individuals to deal with for various issues under the excellent guidance of our Relationship Manager

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If you would like more information: For more information about ShareGift, go to www.sharegift.org/.

Alternatively, if you would like to discuss any other issues raised in this article, please contact your relationship manager