Toronto-based TMX Group Ltd. announced Thursday the launch of a new shareholder voting system prototype that uses distributed ledger technology, better known as blockchain technology.

From corporate boardrooms to the halls of government, blockchains can provide a method for securing votes by embedding them in a cryptographically hardened ledger. This way, any vote made has a historical, immutable record of the event, that can be time-stamped and combined with metadata connected to the event and the identity of the voter.

The company developed the voting prototype in collaboration with Accenture PLC, a leading global professional services company with deep interest in blockchain technology.

Designed as a public company solution for TSX Trust, TMX’s transfer agency and corporate trust services provider, the system, named “the E-Proxy Voting System,” aims to greatly improve the efficiency and accuracy of the voting process during annual shareholder meetings.

The company also expects that using blockchain technology will significantly enhance security through advancements in cryptography. The use of a blockchain not only resolves problems of potentially fraudulent votes, via a cryptographic key system securing the identity and vote of participants, but it also provides a protected historical record of the votes that can be verified by third parties such as auditors and investigators.

Shareholders would not even need to be physically present during votes with TMX’s blockchain solution. By making use of the blockchain’s capability for securing identity and votes a shareholder can use a digital signature from anywhere to verify their vote.

Loui Anastasopoulos, president at TSX Trust and Managing Director at TMX Group believes that the introduction of this technology will enable clients “to better serve their shareholders and fulfill their public company obligations” by providing tools to make corporate governance easier.

For its part, Accenture believes that TMX’s interest in using blockchain technology for corporate governance aligns with its own vision of bringing blockchain to the finance industry.

David Treat, managing director of Accenture’s financial services industry blockchain practice, said that around the world more corporations are embracing blockchain technology to reinvent client services.

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