VP digitises one million letters to investors

Today, 10% of approximately one million letters to investors are delivered digitally in e-Boks, as a voluntary option. In the future, VP aims to achieve 80-90% of all letters, since digital communication will be the default way of delivering letters and messages to investors. The letters may be related to Corporate Actions or an annual statement, and investors will be informed of the transition from physical to digital post. Investors will benefit from faster communication, while issuers and account controllers will benefit from cost reductions for this communication service, because printing costs and postage are eliminated.

“The move from paper to digital creates faster communication and has a series of related positive side effects. The rate of opening is the same or higher with digital post, and the levels of security and privacy are also higher than for physical letters,” explains Bjørn Stendorph Crepaz, Head of Issuer Products at VP SECURITIES.

e-Boks in a Nordic perspective

1.8 million people with 3.1 million securities accounts at VP are potential recipients of digital post. Persons without an activated e-Boks, who could be minors or foreign investors, will not be affected at this point and will still receive physical letters.

“In Denmark, 400 million letters are delivered via e-Boks, mostly from financial institutions and from the public sector, on a yearly basis,” says Nordic Market Director Morten Olesen of e-Boks. “Although e-Boks is present in both Norway and Sweden, the shift from physical to digital post is not as widespread in the other Nordic countries. But I do not see any reason for these countries not to pick up this trend, and for VP SECURITIES too, this may have positive perspectives for digital communication with investors in other countries.”

Statistics and investor relations

One of the key benefits of going digital is the ability to learn more about how digital communication is received. It is possible to obtain statistics for letter opening rates, as well as the speed at which a letter is opened by a target group. For the issuing companies, digital communication with individual investors via VP may pave the way for additional investor relations activities.

e-Boks is an independent limited liability company whose mission is to increase the efficiency of mail distribution between companies and private mail recipients. e-Boks offers companies, public authorities and private citizens an effective, secure and user-friendly platform for digital communication with customers and other parties. More than 30,000 private and public enterprises communicate with over 12 million users worldwide using e-Boks.