Product 2023 – A Year in Review

Another year is drawing to a close, and what a year it’s been! Join us in looking back at the progress made over the past twelve months. From feature-rich upgrades to user driven enhancements, we’re excited to share some of the highlights of a year marked by our commitment to delivering customer first solutions. 

Mobile App

Dark Mode

Dark mode was launched on the Global Shares mobile app. Many tech users have been opting for dark mode on their computers or mobile screens because it can provide a more comfortable, less stimulating, visual experience. The Global Shares dark mode feature allows mobile users to adjust the app to low-light environments while providing better viewing options and reducing battery consumption.

New Look and Layout

The mobile app underwent changes to improve its look and feel and match the app’s features to those on the employee portal. Using the app, participants can now: 

1. View Profile Information 
2. Edit Account Preferences 
3. Access Tax and Regulatory Statements 
4. Explore Global Shares

1099 Tax Documentation & Client Asset Statements (MiFID only)

Participants gained the ability to view and download their 1099  and client asset statements via app ensuring convenient access to tax statements.

Expanded Language Support

The Mobile App expanded its language support six additional languages this year, including French, French Canadian, Greek, Italian, Turkish, and German. This initiative broadened the app’s language support to a total of 11 languages.

Participant Portal Experience

Real-Time Share Price Display

For shares listed on US stock exchanges real-time share price information is now displayed on the sale and exercise wizard for both the desktop portal and mobile app. This enhancement provides important real-time market information, giving your participants access to full price transparency before submitting their trade requests. 

Reporting & Analytics

Three New Reporting Dashboards

Within the Business Intelligence (BI) tool, there are a suite of interactive dashboards and reports designed to help share plan administrators analyze and visualize complex data and gain valuable insights into employee ownership. The dashboards use of switch dimension functionality means you can drill down into granular sets of data and study the finer details of your company’s share plan activity without having to jump from one dashboard to another.  

Over the course of the year, three dashboards were either introduced or underwent substantial enhancements, they are:  

1. Participant Insights 
2. Grant Balance Insights 
3. Vesting & Deferrals 

Reporting Update

The Reporting & Analytics platform underwent a technology upgrade during the fourth quarter of the year which has resulted in significant improvements in performance including a 64% decrease in the average loading times of dashboards.

Trading & Execution

Multiple Listings Trading through a Single Broker

Global Shares enhanced the custody and execution services for clients listed on more than one stock exchange (e.g., multi-ticker). This means that the company can facilitate multi-listed companies with different commission and account structures through a single broker.

Financial Reporting (FR)

Tranche Level Expense Detail Report

This report was added earlier for Financial Reporting users in the Corporate Admin. The report provides tranche-level details such as the tranche vest end dates, the number of awards vesting, etc.

Stream Download Functionality

Admin users can now download FR reports more efficiently using the new streaming download feature. This upgrade allows users to stream data instead of waiting for an entire report to be generated. It is currently available for the following five FR reports: Restricted Stock (RS) Disclosure Detail Report, Option Disclosure Detail Report, Grant Expense Report, RS Earnings Per Share (EPS) Report, and Options EPS Report. 

Authentication & Authorization

New Authentication Framework

A new framework was rolled out across all our applications this year. The benefits include one username for all regions and applications, increased security, and a standardized user experience. Users will also have benefitted from improved self-service recovery flows that were introduced for username and password recovery across all our applications. Both flows are now secured with captcha validation.

Single Sign-On (SSO)

SSO support was introduced for the Corporate Admin portal and the Global Shares mobile app. This has increased data security by using ‘Service Provider initiated SSO’.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this year’s advancements. If you have any feedback or product queries, please get in touch.