Domestic Custody Services
A Canadian leader in domestic custody, CIBC Mellon drives the accurate and timely movement of North American securities and investment funds through:
Efficient Settlement
CIBC Mellon has a direct, electronic interface with the Canadian Depository for Securities (CDS), which allows automated affirmation and settlement confirmation. Our link to CDS is connected to our custody platform, providing real-time interface throughout the day.
BNY Mellon, our U.S. parent, are direct participants of both the Depository Trust Company (DTC) and Federal Reserve Bank Depository. As a result, this seamless exchange of data between our systems and the North American depositories gives us maximum control over the settlement process.
Contractual settlement
For clients who want more predictability in their cash flows, we offer contractual settlement. With contractual settlement, trade instructions are complete and received within a set time frame, and cash is processed in your account regardless of street-side settlement.
Safekeeping
CIBC Mellon provides a secure facility for the safekeeping of stocks, bonds, notes and other securities in both physical and book-based environments.
Your assets are safely held and regular reconciliation of our physical vault and the depositories helps ensure that your assets are accurately recorded on our system. Internal audits of our operations are performed regularly, and an external Service Organization Control Report (“SOC1 report”, previously the Section 5970 report) audit is conducted annually.
Income Processing
We collect interest and dividends on securities under administration and offer contractual income and maturities processing on Canadian and U.S. securities. Our custody platform generates SWIFT and Workbench notifications and real-time confirmations of income payments.
Corporate Actions
We provide timely corporate action notices with respect to tender offers, plan of arrangements, exercise of rights/warrants, conversions, name changes, stock splits and other company reorganizations. Clients can choose the method through which they wish to receive these notifications (i.e. fax, SWIFT or online through our Workbench web application.)
Our corporate action notification procedures focus on control and on optimum turnaround of information to help maximize the time available for our clients and their investment managers to assess the action and submit an informed response.
CIBC Mellon acts promptly on instructions received from our clients with respect to voluntary corporate actions.
We have a dedicated corporate actions and income help desk that handles all entitlement-related inquiries from clients or their investment managers. This group has direct access to the systems and reporting used by the entitlement departments and can therefore easily obtain the information required to respond to inquiries in a very timely manner. When clients call our help desk, they can be confident that CIBC Mellon staff understand the issue and will provide prompt, knowledgeable assistance.
Proxy Voting
CIBC Mellon retains Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (“Broadridge”) to distribute and tally all Canadian and U.S. proxies. Broadridge mails the proxy materials to your designated proxy contact at least 21 days prior to the meeting, unless arrangements have been made for electronic delivery.
Clients can also subscribe to a Broadridge product called Proxy Edge that enables clients to manage their proxies online and run reports.
CIBC Mellon has a dedicated team that responds to proxy-related questions. We also coordinate with Broadridge to provide unique client reporting requirements or facilitate discussions of clients with Broadridge.
Class Actions
CIBC Mellon (through our U.S. parent BNY Mellon) files claims on assets that are undergoing a class action on behalf of our clients. Most North American class actions are opt out while most European actions are opt in. CIBC Mellon assists in disbursing proceeds received from the class action and in responding to client-related inquiries. We also offer class action status reporting through Workbench.
Cash Management
We provide a range of cash investment alternatives to assist clients in improving cash returns.
Market Expertise
Our North American presence is well-established and we keep our clients informed on securities market and industry developments through regular bulletins, newsletters and publications.
