Proxy Season 2017: ISS QualityScore Can Help You Distill the Big Data Challenge
Proxy season is right around the corner, and thousands of companies will be issuing updated disclosures over the next month. Within those disclosures will be buried tens of thousands of important governance and compensation data points. Valuable data, that when distilled to show both the positives and negatives, offer insight into management quality.
How do you handle the proxy season “big data” problem? How do you identify companies to focus on for engagement?
Investors have a short window to engage companies to effect change for 2018
While proxy season 2017 is just beginning, most issuers go into strategy-setting and policy-making nearly in the early autumn. And that means, as an investor, you have a short window – optimistically 3-4 months – to identify companies for engagement, schedule and conduct the engagement, and begin the follow-up process.
But how do you identify the right list of companies to engage, and define the issues that you want to focus your engagement upon? With well over 10,000 companies globally expected to file updated disclosures between now and May, it’s a seemingly herculean task.
ISS QualityScore distills the data, helping you identify companies where engagement is needed most
ISS Governance QualityScore contains more than 470,000 data points on 5,600 companies around the globe, helps you quickly identify companies making changes to their governance structure, find companies that may have executive compensation concerns, and assess emerging trends in the governance landscape.
High-level pillar scores and overall scores give you instant insight into companies that may have issues worth looking into, and detailed factor-level detail give you actionable information to take into your engagement meetings.
Unique data helps you identify emerging sources of governance risk
ISS QualityScore gives you factor-by-factor details of what each company is doing, to help you identify those companies that deserve additional attention. QualityScore reflects the latest corporate governance hot topics by incorporating new factors in each annual methodology update. Among new factors covered for 2017, QualityScore monitors refreshment among public company boards, starting in the United States. While many companies are doing a good job of continually renewing their boards, there are some companies that are slower to respond:
How do you quickly identify companies with big changes?
The QualityScore platform allows you to set alerts, emailing you the moment that a company’s QualityScore profile indicates a significant change in overall score, pillar-level scores, or the underlying data. With a completely customizable portfolio and triggering criteria, you can keep a close eye on your portfolio and understand changes that could be hidden in the details of disclosure.
