Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM) will now offer pass-through voting, via Tumelo, to its clients.
LGIM is the UK first major asset manager to offer this technology in the UK, which allows individual clients to register their own vote on company AGMs, rather than having to go with the ‘block’ vote of the asset manager.
Camden Pension fund is the first of LGIM clients to sign up to use these pass through votes, giving them a direct voice at AGM votes for all the companies they invest in through LGIM’s pooled funds.
Pass-through voting has started to be available in the US in recent years, but Tumelo says this is a “huge step” in the UK in terms of advancing shareholder democracy and improving investment stewardship.
Previously, Tumelo has worked with individual pension funds, and its technology allow members to register a preference on how they would vote on key issues, often relating to ESG issues. These can be used by asset owners and asset managers to influence voting records.
However this lates development takes this one step further, giving large asset owners the opportunity to register their own vote directly. Clients can choose to vote on any shareholder resolutions, rather than just the ones selected from a list of pre-approved policies.
BlackRock operates a similar pass through voting option, more widely used in the US. However this only gives clients an opportunity to use this pass-through voting on a list of of pre-approved policies. Camden Pensions can also override LGIM on individual votes, rather than having to vote on everything, which is also different to the BlackRock product.
Judging by data from last year’s indicative voting, Camden is likely to vote differently to LGIM on human rights votes, health votes, climate change votes, CEO votes.
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