Minerva Analytics - Climate Voting Policy
Data category
- Environmental data
- Governance data
- Research data
- Social data
The data offers solutions for:
- Environmental impact analysis and insight
- Reporting: TCFD
- Reporting: TNFD
- Reporting: UN SDGs
Who are the data users?
- Financial institutions
- Government
- Investors
- Trustees
- Institutional investors including asset managers, asset owners, banks and universities.
Brief description of the data offering
Bespoke Voting Policy as Standard
Minerva is unique in that it does not have a one-size-fits-all "House Voting Policy"; rather our objective is to ensure that each of our clients have a bespoke voting policy aligned to their specific requirements, such as a climate-focussed voting policy.
Minerva and Climate Voting
Since 2015, the Minerva’s sustainability research and voting guidelines have offered consistent and comparable insights into the world’s largest companies’ approach to sustainability reporting disclosure quality and are fully aligned to both the Transition Pathway Initiative (TPI) and Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) principles.
Clients can therefore tailor their voting preferences to take account of high-level policy principles, as well as the types of resolutions available. This is because there is rarely a one-to-one match between the issues and resolutions and there may be wider engagement or investment issues which are only known to the shareholders.
The Minerva Climate Voting Policy and Guidelines are underpinned by robust, quality-driven data and research processes supported by leading-edge technology ensuring consistent insights and guidance to facilitate informed decisions.
In addition to aligning climate stewardship policy towards director accountability, we recognise that shareholders may also wish to have a policy for non-binding/advisory say on climate votes.
A few examples of net-zero policy data:
- Sustainability risks
- Climate emission - Disclosure of Scope 1 and 2 emission data
- Environmental KPIs & carbon emissions
- Sustainability indicators
- Sustainability targets
- Reporting UN SDGs
- TCFD reporting
- Board oversight for ESG
Where and how do you source your data?
Minerva is unique in that it does not have a one-size-fits-all "House Voting Policy"; rather our objective is to ensure that each of our clients have a voting policy which reflects their individual investment style and beliefs. To that end, all of Minerva's clients have custom voting policies as standard. This flexibility means that we are able to apply policy choices with reference to markets, industries, resolutions and issues with a blend of global good practice and local regulations.
With a choice of base-line good practice policies, clients can “have their say” and flex individual topics to meet their specific choices. Indeed, Minerva pioneered the concept of Bespoke Voting Templates in the mid-90s, to deliver consistent, relevant and precise voting guidance. Clients not only benefit from fully bespoke policy guidance, but it is also based on transparent policy rationales drawn from global investor good practice guidelines and regulations together with international, national and local corporate governance codes.
Base line policies are formulated based on global and national frameworks and clients' own investment strategy statements, as well as company law which varies from market to market. Starting principles include the following:
1) OECD Principles of Corporate Governance: https://www.oecd.org/corporate/principles-corporate-governance/
2) ICGN Global Governance Principles: https://www.icgn.org/icgn-global-governance-principles
3) PLSA Stewardship & Voting Guidelines: https://www.plsa.co.uk/Policy-and-Research/Document-library/PLSA-Stewardship-Voting-Guidelines
4) AMNT Red Line Voting: https://redlinevoting.org/
Other sources which influence our voting policies include academic literature review and market research with a variety of stakeholders including NGOs, trustee associations and professional bodies.
Minerva’s agile “policy partnership” approach to voting policy development means that we are often many years ahead of competitors. For example, Minerva offered climate aware voting guidelines prior to the creation of TCFD.
What is the cost for your data offering?
Pricing for this solution is available upon request.