The role of the share registry manager - introducing Avenir Registrars

Who are we?

Avenir Registrars is excited to be associated with Snowball Effect. In a way we feel a close connection to Snowball as we too are a new company seeking to break the mould in financial market infrastructure. Our vision is for efficiency in systems and to remove cost and paper.

We are a small company with aspirations to provide markets, SMEs and investors with efficient and cost effective trading, settlement and registry services and we are excited about helping aspiring NZ companies.

Avenir started in 2013 as a collaboration between three colleagues who collectively have many years experience in developing and implementing stock exchange trading and settlement systems.

The demand for such systems is global, but early on we saw that there were opportunities for Avenir to act as an operator, particularly as a securities registrar, and we now operate registries in both New Zealand and the United Kingdom, where our register has just become the first to be CREST connected in about 20 years.

CREST connectivity coupled with relationships we have built in the UK mean that we can offer a branch registry in London and introduce New Zealand companies to market participants in the UK.

What do we do?

For Snowball Effect companies we are providing registry services - maintaining the company's formal register of investors. Through engaging the services of an independent professional registry provider, a company can be certain that transactions are conducted and balances held in a secure and auditable environment. For the company planning on growth this can mean an easy transition to connecting to a market.

Other services offered to companies include:

• Corporate action support - the Avenir system calculates and records corporate actions, including dividends and the issuance of bonus shares. The system determines the investors and the calculates the corporate action on the specified date;
• Real-time view of shareholders and transactions;
• Exports and reports - suitable for managing mailing lists and companies office filings;
• Processing of physical instructions, for example, change of address, change of name etc; and
• Secure storage of company documents (relevant to the operation of the registry).

The future

At Avenir we are pleased that our initial offering has launched well. There are some things we are working on in the short term, including:

• Investor access to update contact details; and
• Streamlining the transfer process.

We're actively working on making the process for identity and user account management better, and in the future our aim is to remove the need for paper based transfers of shares. We're also developing integration of the registry with corporate and shareholder communications.

In the meantime

Every investor will have access to the Avenir system and will be set up with a login. If you're a shareholder of a Snowball Effect company, we encourage you to create a password, login and have a look around. Please make sure that your personal details are correct and let us know if you need to make any changes. If you need to transfer shares, let us know and we will send you a form to be complete - we'll need some additional information as well.

Snowball registry

Snowball Effect also provides a dedicated share registry service for companies: Online share registry service