The Annual General Meeting of The Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators (ICSA) took place in Auckland, New Zealand yesterday. Edith Shih, International President, formally announced the rebrand of the ICSA to The Chartered Governance Institute (CGI) in a move designed to further position the Institute as a leader in the field of Corporate Governance. It will continue to promote the two designations of Chartered Secretary and Chartered Governance Professional.
 
2019 marked the second year that the Institute held a hybrid AGM, where delegates could access the meeting online alongside the in-room attendees. With over 30,000 members that live and work in more than 80 countries across the globe, holding a hybrid AGM enabled every member of this highly geographically diversified membership base to attend.
 
This year also saw the adoption of online lodging of proxies, in a move away from the more traditional paper based lodging of pro. Members were emailed the Notice of Meeting, including their unique login credentials, to allow them to securely authenticate themselves in to the Lumi online voting platform, and lodge their proxies on resolutions in a 6 week period before the live meeting. The online proxies were then seamlessly integrated in to the live meeting, combining all votes to provide instant, accurate results.
 
“I am delighted with the success of this year’s AGM” said Tim Sheehy, Director General of The Chartered Governance Institute. “We believe that companies should consider hybrid AGMs to better engage with shareholders. And for us, allowing as many members as possible to attend our AGM, no matter where they were in the world, was really important. We are very grateful to Lumi for facilitating both the hybrid AGM itself, as well as the online voting platform”
 
Richard Taylor, CEO of Lumi, explained how the Lumi platform supported the CGI. “We have run hundreds of hybrid and virtual meetings around the world, so we understand that its important that remote attendees can participate in the meeting in the same way as if they were in the room. Our software allows for secure, real-time polling, managed Q&A and seamlessly integrates with webcasting services to allow for live streaming of the meeting”
 
The AGM ran smoothly, with both in-room attendees and members attending remotely from around the globe, participating fully in the meeting, with the President taking questions from both in the room, and online.
 
With the global trend towards the adoption of hybrid meetings gathering pace, and the belief that physical only meetings will be increasingly harder to justify from a governance perspective, The Chartered Governance Institute are once again the leading example of best practice in the field.