Watchlists

Every industry is currently working out what AI means for it.

Stewardship is more exposed than most. The function is under increased operating pressure from several directions at once — complex ballot issues, expanding regulatory disclosure, RFPs and client-reporting work absorbing senior analyst time. On top of that, there's a structural shift on the supply side: the proxy advisors that most asset managers have relied on are now under serious regulatory scrutiny — and for the first time, credible alternatives are emerging.

The era of inheriting a single, off-the-shelf voting policy from a proxy advisor is ending. But policies aren’t just flat lists of rules, they contain frameworks and complex functionality that ensures your view is appropriately represented.

One such example is watchlists where different rules are applied to different companies.

A few common examples:

• Stricter governance thresholds on your largest holdings (often the S&P 500 names that drive most of the AUM).
• A human rights lens applied selectively to defence, surveillance or controversial weapons exposure.
• Different say-on-pay rules when CEO compensation crosses certain absolute or relative thresholds.
• Tighter environmental rules in sectors where transition risk is most material.
  
  

What Watchlists do

This is the problem ProxyBeacon's Watchlists feature was built to solve.

A watchlist is a defined slice of your issuer universe — built once by criteria you control. For example index inclusion, revenue thresholds, sectors or any custom criteria you give us. It could even be a combination. The system then maintains that watchlist automatically: as constituents change, the list updates, so a company entering or leaving the S&P 500 (or crossing a revenue threshold) is reflected without manual intervention.

Once a watchlist is defined, you can attach it to specific rules within your voting policy. The same voting policy can then express the nuance that actually exists in your stewardship thinking: apply our standard governance waterfall to all holdings, but layer in the human rights overlay on this defined list of names.

Every vote it triggers is fully traceable — back to the rule that fired, the watchlist that scoped it, and a fully customisable research report that cites every flag to source. That's the audit trail audit and compliance teams have started to demand.

See it in practice

If you'd like to see how Watchlists work in practice — including a walkthrough of a human rights watchlist driving a vote against on a US defence contractor's combined CEO/chair, with the supporting director research one click away — please get in touch. We don't make our demos public, but we're happy to share a private walkthrough or have a conversation.