AGM essentials

The goal of this learning path is to help legal and financial teams efficiently prepare, organize and follow up the Annual General Meeting (hereinafter 'AGM'). It is designed to support in: 

• Meeting all statutory and internal deadlines;

• Ensuring consistent and compliant documentation across entities;

• Managing the full AGM flow (invitation, voting, minutes, ...).
• Working from a single source of truth for all corporate and AGM-related documents withing Corporify.

To set-up the consistent work-flow, you can find the following below:

1. Add the date of the AGM

2. Legal requirements

3. Reminders

4. Check shareholder completeness

1. Add the date of the AGM

Start by adding the date of the AGM, whether it is on a specific date, set on day-of-month or within a range. When you add this date, you can monitor this key milestone via the corporate calendar on the dashboard, expect when the AGM date is set within a range.

Below you can find a step by step guide on how to add the date of the annual general meeting and fiscal year.

For detailed instructions, click 'Start tutorial' below.

2. Legal requirements

Before starting with the preparation of the AGM, it is important you have a clear overview of the specific legal requirements of your legal entities. For example:

• you need to know when to send the AGM invitation (e.g. invite shareholders at least 15 days in advance);

• whether specific agenda items must be included (e.g. reappointment of a director or statutory auditor); and

• whether there are additional requirements depending on the legal form or a stock-listed status (e.g. additional formalities for convening the AGM).

Below you can find a step by step guide on how to add a custom field to keep track of the specific legal requirements for each entity.

For detailed instructions, click 'Start tutorial' below.

3. Reminders

If you want to monitor the full AGM process, you can set up different reminders to track all relevant deadlines and follow-ups.

3.1. On the date of the AGM

You can add multiple reminders based on the date of the AGM and determine when you want to receive the reminder, for examples:

• 2 months before to start preparing and sending the invitation.

• 1 month before to follow up the report of the statutory auditor or to coordinate with finance on the annual accounts.

Below you can find a step by step guide on how add a reminder for the annual general meeting.

For detailed instructions, click 'Start tutorial' below.

3.2. On the end date of mandates

On the end date of mandates (directors or statutory auditors), you can set up a reminder to verify that all mandates are timely reappointed. We recommend creating this reminder together with the preparation of the AGM invitations, so that the reappointment is included as an agenda item of the AGM. 

Below you can find a step by step guide on how to add a reminder on the end date of a mandate.

For detailed instructions, click 'Start tutorial' below.

3.3 Other

Additionally, you can create any other reminders that are relevant for your AGM workflow. Click 'here' for more information on how to create reminders.

4. Check shareholder completeness

Before preparing the minutes or AGM invitation, verify that all shareholder data is complete and up to date. This is required to generate convocations automatically but also to automate eSigning process . Below you can find some key takeways:

• Title and address: Add each shareholder’s title and address.
• Email and contact person: Add an email for each shareholder. For company shareholders, also add a contact person with an email.
• Signers: For company shareholders, add a contact tagged 'Signer' for eSigning.

4.1. Export the share register to Excel

If you want an overview of which shareholder details are complete, you can export the share register to Excel and verify whether each shareholder has an address, title and email address. For shareholders that are legal entities, you can also check whether a contact person with an email address has been added.

Below you can find a step by step guide on how to export a share register to Excel.

For detailed instructions, click 'Start tutorial' below.

4.2. Add shareholder details

When you have made the export and notice that certain information is missing, you can find below the necessary link to find out how to complete the shareholder details. Here you can find additional information on how to edit legal entities and here you can find additional information on how to edit persons.

Below you can find a step by step guide on how to add a contact such as a contact person or a signer.

For detailed instructions, click 'Start tutorial' below.

4.3. Add preferred communication channel

It is important to record the preferred communication channel for each shareholder in a structured way. If all shareholders wish to receive AGM documentation (such as the invitation) by email, this is straightforward and you do not need to have it visualized who want to receive the communication per mail or per post. In that case, you can simply skip this step and proceed to the next phase of the process.

However, if some shareholders prefer to receive the invitation by post and others by email, a clear, centralized overview of these preferences is essential. We recommend creating different groups to obtain a clear overview of which shareholders prefer to receive the invitation by email, by post or via another channel. If you only have a limited number of shareholders, you can alternatively use labels and assign the relevant label to each shareholder. Below you can find a step by step guide on how to create a group. In the tutorial below, you will learn how to:

1. Create a separate group for each communication channel (for example, “AGM Postal” and “AGM Email”) and add the relevant shareholders to the correct group.

2. Add a columns in the share register to indicate the selected communication channel (group) for each shareholder and to help prevent a shareholder from being assigned to multiple groups.

3. Perform a verification check: in the third chapter, we explain how to count how many entities and shareholders are included in each group, and how to confirm that no entities are included that are no longer shareholders.

For detailed instructions, click 'Start tutorial' below.