From January through June, we mailed out 14.7 million proxies, tabulated 1.9 million votes and managed 1,400 meetings for our clients. Through decades of managing annual meetings, we have seen how voting behaviors and trends have evolved over the years.
As you might expect, the trend continues to move toward electronic distribution and voting and away from paper and telephone voting. Paper-based voting was at an all-time low this year with slightly more than 62 percent of shareholders opting for the old-school method.
Over the last five years, we've observed a more than 12 percent drop in the total number of physical proxy cards mailed and a 40 percent drop in the number of paper-based votes, while the number of electronic distributions has increased 43 percent and web-based voting volumes have increased more than 36 percent.
The proportion of electronic distributions has nearly doubled in the last five years:
And the proportion of web votes has increased to more than 28 percent, from a five-year low of 17 percent in 2013:
There has been a dramatic increase in clients taking advantage of the "notice and access" option to send a notice of online availability of proxy materials in lieu of a full mailing. The proportion of these meetings has increased from 21 percent to nearly 27 percent since 2012.
We like to analyze proxy and annual meeting data every year to showcase a few of the major trends in proxy voting behavior. However, the importance of your annual meeting goes far beyond knowing these statistics. At Computershare, we have an extraordinary amount of experience and the leading experts in the industry to help make all shareholder meetings a success. Contact us to learn more about how we can help manage your shareholder meetings (clients are encouraged to reach out directly to their relationship manager).