ISS Policy Gateway

ISS Annual Policy Development Process

Institutional Shareholder Services Inc.(ISS), a leading provider of corporate governance solutions to the global financial community, kicked off its annual global policy formulation process in July 2012 by inviting its institutional investor clients, corporate issuers and various corporate governance market intermediaries to participate in its 2013 proxy voting policy survey.  ISS’ policy survey offers a unique opportunity for a broad universe of market constituents to be active participants in ISS’ policy development process.

Each year, since 2005, ISS has undertaken a fully transparent and an extraordinarily extensive policy formulation process that includes a broad-based global survey, issue and market-specific roundtables and an open comment period open to all market participants. During the process, clients and industry constituents are encouraged to provide their views on key governance issues likely to impact the upcoming proxy season.  

"Combining the aggregate thinking of ISS’ diverse asset management and asset owner institutional client base with input from corporate issuers and other experts in the field, enriched with our own expertise, allows ISS to implement policy guidelines that strike the right balance between shareholder interests and business practicality,” said Dr. Martha Carter, ISS’ Head of Global Research. 

The survey period is open through August 17, and will be followed in October by an open comment period after which, ISS publishes its draft policies. The high level timeline is as follows:

The open comment period is designed to elicit objective, specific feedback from investors, corporate issuers and industry constituents on the practical implementation of proposed policies. Unless specifically requested by the submitter, feedback received during the open comment period will be made available via ISS' online Policy Gateway.

“The extent to which ISS solicits market input and makes its policy development process inclusive and transparent year after year is simply unparalleled in our industry,” said Gary Retelny, President of ISS.  “We encourage all informed corporate governance constituents, particularly all of our clients, to participate in the process.  In fact, early roundtable input from investors and corporate constituents on ISS’ approach to peer group construction and measuring pay is already under consideration.”

To learn more about ISS’ policy formulation process and the results of our annual survey, please visit the links below.

If you have any questions about the survey or the survey process, please contact Bimal Patel at +1.301.556.0418 or by e-mail at policy@issgovernance.com.