Vanguard Unveils Data from Investor Choice Proxy Voting Pilot

VALLEY FORGE, Pa., Sept. 17, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Vanguard today unveiled data from its Investor Choice proxy voting pilot, outlining individual investor engagement and voting policy preferences from the 2024 proxy season.

Vanguard's Investor Choice pilot, which launched in early 2023, empowers individual investors to make their voices heard on important shareholder matters at portfolio companies held in the participating Vanguard funds. Since its launch, the pilot has expanded to include five equity index funds comprising more than $100 billion in assets – offering individual investors in those funds the ability to choose from a selection of proxy voting policy options that determine how their proportionate fund ownership is voted at shareholder meetings.

"We believe Investor Choice is an exciting and impactful way to empower individual investors in specific Vanguard funds to more directly influence how their proxies are voted, improve the corporate governance ecosystem, and reinforce our passive, investor-owned, and time-tested approach that supports millions of investors," said John Galloway, Global Head of Investment Stewardship at Vanguard. "By offering Investor Choice, we are enabling interested individual investors to more fully align their investment portfolios with their personal preferences in order to advance their long-term financial goals."

Approximately 40,000 Vanguard investors participated in the pilot during the 2024 proxy season, reflecting the growing interest from individual investors to engage in the proxy voting process. Key findings include:

• Overall, participating investors' policy selections¹ were:
  • "Not Voting" Policy: 2.3%
  • Company Board-Aligned Policy: 30.3%
  • Third-party ESG Policy: 24.4%
  • Vanguard-Advised Funds Policy: 43%
    
    
• Individual investors in the Vanguard ESG U.S. Stock ETF selected the third-party ESG policy (78.2%) at more than three-times the rate of the overall participating population (24.4%).
  
  
• Investors in the Vanguard Dividend Appreciation Index Fund were the most likely to support the Company Board-Aligned Policy (33.4%) and the least likely to support the Third-party ESG Policy (17.9%) across the five funds included in the 2024 pilot.
  
  
• Participants who invested in the piloted funds directly with Vanguard were approximately two-times more likely to participate in the pilot versus those who invested in the participating funds through other firms.

"The results from our pilot underscore that individual investors have a point-of-view on corporate governance and, consistent with our mission to take a stand for investors, we are committed to continuing to empower investors by expanding access to the proxy voting process," added Galloway.  

For more information about Vanguard's Investor Choice pilot, please click here.

About Vanguard

Founded in 1975, Vanguard is one of the world's leading investment management companies. The firm offers investments, advice, and retirement services to tens of millions of individual investors around the globe—directly, through workplace plans, and through financial intermediaries. Vanguard operates under a unique, investor-owned structure where Vanguard fund shareholders own the funds, which in turn own Vanguard. As such, Vanguard adheres to a simple purpose: To take a stand for all investors, to treat them fairly, and to give them the best chance for investment success. For more information, visit vanguard.com

For more information about Vanguard funds or ETF Shares, contact your financial advisor to obtain a prospectus or, if available, a summary prospectus. Investment objectives, risks, charges, expenses, and other important information are contained in the prospectus; read and consider it carefully before investing.

Vanguard ETF Shares are not redeemable with the issuing Fund other than in very large aggregations worth millions of dollars. Instead, investors must buy and sell Vanguard ETF Shares in the secondary market and hold those shares in a brokerage account. In doing so, the investor may incur brokerage commissions and may pay more than net asset value when buying and receive less than net asset value when selling.

All investing is subject to risk, including possible loss of principal.

Vanguard Marketing Corporation, Distributor.

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SOURCE Vanguard