On 10 March 2025, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published a feedback statement on vote reporting, produced by the Vote Reporting Group.

Background

The Vote Reporting Group was established in November 2022 to develop detailed proposals to enhance shareholder vote reporting by asset managers operating in the UK. The group is comprised of members from across the investment community, including investment managers, pension funds, insurers, companies, investment consultants, proxy advisers and non-governmental organisations, with the FCA acting as group Secretariat.

In June 2023, the group published a consultation and discussion paper which proposed a voluntary, standardised and comprehensive vote reporting template for asset managers to communicate to asset owner clients on their voting activity. The paper also explored the case for the vote reporting template being a public registry

Feedback statement

The feedback sets out the summarises the feedback it received to the consultation paper, in relation to both the vote reporting template and the public registry. It also sets out the group’s response to that feedback.

On the vote reporting template, the group confirms that the template will include:

  • Standard fields. These will mostly remain as consulted on, with an added field to distinguish between the country of incorporation and the country of trade, and some changes to field names and categories to better align with market terminology.
  • Vote category fields, which have been updated to offer more options for users (with the aim of improving the accuracy of the information).
  • A narrative rationale field, which will remain ‘single tier’ and will allow users to select up to 5 categories.

The template will be owned and managed by the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association.

Next steps

The group confirms that there is no immediate action for firms to take regarding their vote reporting. All next steps firms can take are set out in the PLSA’s FAQ document, and the group and the PLSA plan to continue engaging with stakeholders during the year to deliver and embed the template.

The template is expected to be operational and ready for firms to use from early 2026.