Voting and Engagement in Public Equities

This paper outlines UCIM’s views of best practices for shareholder engagement within public equities. This approach was formalised following an extensive review of industry best practices and is used internally by UCIM to monitor the engagement activities of the CUEF’s third-party managers, as a core part of its sustainable investment strategy.

Download the infographic here and read the full paper here.

UCIM believes that the most appropriate approach to shareholder engagement for the CUEF’s public equity managers is one which is i) led by investment professionals, ii) has a clear escalation strategy, iii) is focused on material issues, iv) maximises the impact of voting against Directors by supporting this with suitable communication, and v) allows opportunities to collaborate with other investors.  

UCIM has developed an internal framework for managers around policies, voting activity, and disclosures. UCIM scores the CUEF’s public equity managers against this framework annually to identify areas for improvement of the stewardship of the companies in their portfolios.  UCIM puts in place a tailored action plan to support its fund managers to adopt a more comprehensive approach, tracking progress through follow-up meetings.

To provide transparency and demonstrate progress implementing this approach, UCIM will report annual updates to stakeholders, including the number of sustainability-related engagements with managers, aggregated voting data, and case studies.