It is in the pension industry’s interest to get the adoption of the new industry shareholder Vote Reporting Template “done and quickly”, Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), director of sustainable finance, Sacha Sadan, argued.

FCA’s Vote Reporting Group and the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA) launched the update template during a session at the PLSA Investment Conference 2025.

Speaking in a session, Sadan emphasised that the industry should ensure they have adoption of the Vote Reporting Template as this will enhance member engagement.

Vote Reporting Group co-chair and Railpen senior investment manager, Caroline Escott, said that the FCA and Vote Reporting Group spent an "awful lot of time" engaging with membership associations, the Investment Consultancy Sustainability Working Group, as well as participating in a lot of conversations with individuals who that worked in the group itself.

She said the aim of this was to produce something that is a "step beyond" where the industry currently is, whilst ensuring it is as implementable and available as possible for asset managers of all shapes and sizes.

Sadan emphasised that to the FCA this is a “really important part of stewardship”, but stressed that it is not the only part.

“This industry, at this moment in time, is under a lot of pressure as people care about this. What do I do, how do I do it, how do I explain it?” he said.

“The other pressure is cost pressure, if you can get one template, do it digitally and have it sorted and do less work, surely that’s a win/win for the industry.

“So that’s really good news, it's not perfect, it has needed to go through a few stages but the PLSA is involved and the FCA will be watching like a hawk to make sure it gets taken up. It is an area that is never going to go away.”

Escott noted that there had been a demand from clients and that having consistent transparency across the voting activity on a client’s behalf is a “really good” thing.

Sadan said that the Vote Reporting Template will showcase the data of what is being done by asset managers to the asset owners.

“Some people are already doing this, but it’s going to be done in a more consistent way. This is voluntary, but it is voluntary knowing people want this,” he added.

However, Escott acknowledged that there are two areas to improve on but said voting information has “vastly” improved since the PLSA published its original reporting template.

The first area of improvement, she said, was the number of most significant votes that get presented, suggesting there should be a “happy medium” for this.

The second area was the rationale, to which Escott said: “A good rationale as to why the asset manager voted a particular way is fundamental to helping the voting reporting council and helping trustees understand how meaningful the approach to voting has been taken, which is just one part of stewardship.

“That really helps us get an insight into whether or not that vote is part of an escalation activity or previous engagement etc. The quality of the narrative of the rationale hasn’t been brilliant so far.

“It is not just giving us very detailed information on a small amount of votes or talking about fund or manager level approaches to stewardship.

“It’s about filling that space in the middle and ensuring we have a certain level of straightforward decision-useful information across all of the voting activity that is undertaken on a pension scheme's behalf.

“The power is that this should make it much more straightforward for asset owners, who don’t necessarily have their own in-house stewardship team or extensive government resources elsewhere, to get the information they need to be able to engage with their asset managers effectively.”

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