This content is from: Portfolio
The 2016 Tech 50: Robert Schifellite
The Broadbridge president of investor communications debuts at No. 48 on our annual Tech 50 ranking.
Online and mobile voting are not quite ready for prime time in the U.S. political system, but that future has already arrived in the world of corporate governance, thanks in no small part to Broadridge Financial Solutions. By way of the company’s investor communication division’s ProxyEdge product, the $3 billion-in-revenue, Lake Success, New York–based Broadridge facilitates proxy voting and other shareholder communications for more than 90 percent of the public companies and mutual funds based in North America. Spearheading these efforts is Robert Schifellite, a 30-year financial industry veteran who is president of investor communication solutions. The division led by Schifellite, 57, accounts for 75 percent of Broadridge’s revenue. “Proxy processing and voting is going to be a huge deal for corporate governance,” explains the Brooklyn native, who has a bachelor’s degree in accounting and an MBA from Hofstra University, and lives on Long Island. The practice has yet to reach mass adoption, however, so Schifellite promotes automated communications through both marketing and public forums. He participated in a February 2015 Securities and Exchange Commission roundtable on a proposed universal proxy ballot and other ideas for promoting retail participation in the proxy process. SEC chair Mary Jo White subsequently urged companies to “give meaningful consideration to using some form of a universal proxy ballot even though the proxy rules currently do not require it.” Broadridge, which also processes an average $5 trillion a day in equity and fixed-income trades, is eyeing potential applications of blockchain; it participated this year in a $60 million funding round for New York–based Digital Asset Holdings. Blockchain “will have an impact on voting,” says Schifellite, who previously worked as a Deloitte & Touche auditor and joined Broadridge predecessor ADP Brokerage Services Group in 1992. “But across all of Broadridge, this is a significant focus.”
Visit The 2016 Tech 50: Making Financial Services Fasters, Cheaper, Bigger for more.
 1. Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp.  2. Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange  3. Lance Uggla Markit  4. Phupinder Gill CME Group  5. Shawn Edwards and Vlad Kliatchko Bloomberg  6. R. Martin Chavez Goldman Sachs Group |
 7. Robert Goldstein BlackRock  8. Adena Friedman Nasdaq  9. Deborah Hopkins Citi Ventures  10. Daniel Coleman KCG Holdings  11. Stephen Neff Fidelity Investments  12. David Craig Thomson Reuters |
 13. Michael Spencer ICAP  14. Michael Bodson Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.  15. Charles Li Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing  16. Chris Concannon BATS Global Markets  17. Blythe Masters Digital Asset Holdings  18. David Rutter R3CEV |
 19. Neil Katz D.E. Shaw & Co.  20. Lee Olesky Tradeweb Markets  21. Richard McVey MarketAxess Holdings  22. Seth Merrin Liquidnet Holdings  23. Robert Alexander Capital One Financial Corp.  24. Brad Katsuyama IEX Group |
 25. Antoine Shagoury State Street Corp.  26. David Gledhill DBS Bank  27. Lou Eccleston TMX Group  28. Andreas Preuss Deutsche BÖrse  29. Dan Schulman PayPal Holdings  30. Scott Dillon Wells Fargo & Co. |
 31. Mike Chinn S&P Global Market Intelligence  32. Craig Donohue Options Clearing Corp.  33. Gary Norcross Fidelity National Information Services  34. Steven O'Hanlon Numerix  35. Sebastián Ceria Axioma  36. Michael Cooper BT Radianz |
 37. Tyler Kim MaplesFS  38. Neal Pawar AQR Capital Management  39. David Harding Winton Capital Management  40. Chris Corrado London Stock Exchange Group  41. Brian Conlon First Derivatives  42. Jim Minnick eVestment |
 43. Stephane Dubois Xignite  44. Mazy Dar OpenFin  45. Yasuki Okai NRI Holdings America  46. Kim Fournais Saxo Bank  47. Jock Percy Perseus  48. Robert Schifellite Broadridge Financial Solutions |
 49. Brian Sentance Xenomorph Software  50. Pieter van der Does Adyen |