"It was very easy for us to choose Euroclear's new insider service. Continuing cooperation with the same reliable provider made the transition smooth, and we didn't have to start from scratch with a new service. Euroclear's comprehensive services, such as shareholder lists and shareholder information needed at general meetings, are already familiar and reliable. This comprehensive solution under one roof made the decision easy and clear," says Aspo's Executive & Governance Assistant Tea Turunen.
The ease of service is appealing – The story of Aspo's insider management
Insider Elements by Euroclear offers companies and their insiders a comprehensive service package that facilitates insider management. The service covers both the needs defined by the Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) and domestic regulations. With the service, the company and its insiders are always up to date on who belongs to which insider group.
Aspo Oyj started using the new service in the summer of 2024. Until then, the company had used Euroclear's Sire service and manually maintained lists for insider register management. However, as the service reached the end of its lifecycle, Aspo had to find a new, more modern solution for insider management. Choosing the Insider Elements by Euroclear service was an obvious choice for Aspo.
Tea started at Aspo about a year ago, so she hadn't used the Sire service for long, even though the service had been in use at Aspo since 2005. At the time of migration, there were a few open projects in addition to the permanent insider list.
"We had a lot of manual work, which made maintaining the lists of insiders very laborious and slow. The lists were maintained in Word and Excel, and each person involved in an insider project had to be sent a document to complete their information and return it signed," Turunen illustrates.
"The list manager had a lot to verify. After sending the notifications, it was necessary to ensure they were received and acknowledged, and to manually record the acknowledgment times for the right person. This took a lot of time, and there was always a possibility of errors."
Transitioning to the new service freed Aspo from this form-filling hassle.
When the decision to transition to the new insider service was made, Euroclear Finland transferred the data from the old Sire service directly to the new system.
It was immediately apparent that once the lists were transferred, the Insider Elements by Euroclear service worked efficiently and significantly sped up everyone's work.
"During the transition phase, we encountered a challenge: to create a new user, the main user must have the person's social security number so that the new user can authenticate strongly into the system. However, this was a one-time procedure, and in the next project, people can be invited directly from the insider service," Turunen explains.
Tea Turunen serves as the main user of insider services at Aspo. The new insider service particularly facilitates her work.
From the main user's perspective, one of the most important benefits of the Insider Elements by Euroclear service is that users are now responsible for their own information and its accuracy. At the same time, abandoning Excel gymnastics and paper sending saves the main user's time and reduces the possibility of errors.
"For example, management insiders must check their information annually. When insiders are invited to the service to check their information, the responsibility for the accuracy of the information lies with the users themselves," Turunen describes.
Although transitioning to the new system still required manual work, managing the information has already become significantly easier now that insiders are in the system.
"It was a moment of joy for me when I got a list of project participants and all their information with the push of a button from the service. Previously, I had filled in that information one by one, including the times when a person was added to the list. And now they are directly available from the report," Turunen rejoices.
"The project acknowledgment function is, of course, still partially developing, because for now, I still have to send a message to users, which they must acknowledge separately. Ideally, these messages would not need to be sent, but the acknowledgment would come directly from the service."
In the future, checking and updating information will be smooth, and the main user can see the events made in the service, their exact time, and who made the event from the event log. Thus, for example, it is easy to see when each person has confirmed their information.
In addition to the main user, Aspo has insiders who view their own information through the insider service. From their perspective, Insider Elements by Euroclear is clear and easy to use. Updating information is smooth, and it is up to date because they take care of it themselves. When all projects are in the new service in the future, the people on the lists will always have up-to-date information on which lists or projects they belong to.
The visibility function of the project lists helps people involved in the project see who else is involved in the same project. The company's main user can determine whether a person on the project list can see others listed and whether the person is visible to others on the list.
Insider Elements by Euroclear has been developed in close cooperation with users, which is reflected in the high-quality end result. The service's features precisely meet the needs of insider management, and it allows companies and insiders to trust that their information is recorded on the lists in accordance with regulations. The service is constantly evolving, and future versions will include new features that serve the user.
"The service already facilitates insider management, so we look forward to the improvements brought by future versions," Turunen concludes.
