Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) has launched an Engagement Disclosure Solution to simplify and automate engagement reporting by institutional investors, also helping them to meet global regulatory and best practice disclosure standards.
According to ISS, the audit-ready solution supports collaborative, self-managed, and third-party engagements, with customisable, branded outputs for public display on the investor’s website or as part of internal engagement reporting. The solution fully automates data upload, output preparation, and disclosure of engagements with companies inside or outside of investor portfolios.
ISS, a provider of proxy advice and other investment stewardship solutions to the global financial community, is part of the part of the ISS STOXX group of companies, a division of Deutsche Börse Group.
“Our differentiated solution leverages innovative and proprietary technology to empower institutional investors to articulate their own engagement narrative in an increasingly sophisticated and varied global environment of regulatory and shareholder democracy requirements,” said Lorraine Kelly, Global Head of Investment Stewardship Solutions at ISS STOXX.
ISS said the solution streamlines regulatory reporting and supports structured disclosure under Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation, Shareholder Rights Directive II, stewardship codes, and other national and global standards.
As well as supporting investors’ compliance with global standards, ISS’s Engagement Disclosure Solution enhances transparency by “clearly communicating” engagement activities to investors’ clients, regulators, and beneficiaries. Investors can also choose to restrict certain engagement data disclosure to internal users only, for enhanced control and confidentiality.
ISS said the solution complements the firm’s suite of voting engagement and disclosure solutions, collaborative engagement services and other workflow solutions which support a wide variety of investor use cases. It also connects with the firm’s our Vote Disclosure Solution to provide a unified view of stewardship activities. ISS Governance clients can also upload any engagement data through ProxyExchange.
Fellow proxy advice provider Glass Lewis enhanced its engagement capabilities earlier this year with the purchase of Esgaia, a platform that supports institutional-level investment stewardship data and workflows.
