AI and the Future of Proxy Research — Will Goodwin in the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance
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ProxyBeacon: AI-powered proxy research
Generate your own proxy research in-house. Get custom reports, governance flags, and rule outputs within hours of a meeting being announced — fully sourced and auditable.
Tumelo provides both the research platform (ProxyBeacon) and the voting infrastructure (ProxySphere) so you can go from research to vote execution in one place.
Why stewardship teams are bringing
proxy research in-house
The proxy voting landscape is shifting. For years, stewardship teams have relied on a small number of proxy advisors to provide the research and recommendations behind voting decisions. That model is increasingly under pressure.
Today, more stewardship teams are bringing research and decision-making process in-house.
The scale alone demands it — large institutional investors may vote on thousands of meetings in a single proxy season, each requiring timely research, policy application, and a clear, defensible rationale often under real time pressure.
At the same time, traditional research can arrive late in the process and by the time it's available, teams are already managing hundreds of meetings, making decisions more reactive than considered.
Expectations are shifting, too. The UK Stewardship Code 2026 places greater emphasis on demonstrable stewardship activities and outcomes. Regulators and clients increasingly expect voting decisions to reflect a firm’s own policies and analysis, rather than a standardised external view.
All of this creates a clear need: tools that help stewardship teams produce their own research quickly and consistently, with full auditability, without having to build the entire process themselves.
In-house proxy research, powered by AI
ProxyBeacon is Tumelo's AI platform for proxy voting research and stewardship workflows. It enables stewardship teams at asset managers and asset owners to generate their own structured, fully sourced proxy research — aligned to the firm's own policies, priorities, and reporting requirements.
Custom research reports, fast
Save hours per meeting cycle. Define your own criteria and flags, and receive customised reports within hours of meetings being announced. Generate reports on specific topics like:
- Board quality and independence
- Executive remuneration outcomes
- Shareholder proposals
- Audit, risk and governance flags
Reports are fully sourced, with clear links back to the underlying disclosures. Read about AI and the future of proxy research in the Harvard Law School Forum.
Automated governance flagging
No more manual scanning of proxy materials. Flag your key governance thresholds and get notified when they're triggered. For example:
- "Alert me if director overboarding exceeds our threshold"
- "Flag any pay plan with excessive discretion"
- "Notify me if climate targets aren't tied to measurable progress"
ProxyBeacon monitors disclosures and notifies you immediately when your conditions are met.
Custom voting policies
Take full control of your voting decisions. ProxyBeacon lets you define and generate rule outputs, and backtest them for accuracy and effectiveness.
- Define rules intuitively using natural language
- Apply flexible policies by market, sector, or theme
- Update rules yourself, quickly and easily
Use ProxyBeacon independently, or alongside existing third-party policy recommendations. See how Tumelo's approach to voting policies works.
Peer-comparison reporting
Produce peer-comparison reports at pace, giving you more time to prepare for company engagements. Reports are fully sourced with links to give clear evidence for engagement or vote decisions.
- Self-define peer groups
- Compare CEO pay vs TSR across peer groups
- Define report templates with flags that highlight differences between companies
Leverage your own data
Extend ProxyBeacon's AI capabilities with your proprietary information. Upload your own engagement notes, internal research, and previous voting instructions to generate truly custom analysis that reflects your full stewardship history.
Why our AI can be trusted for proxy research and voting policies
The most common question stewardship teams ask about AI in proxy voting is simple: Can it be trusted? It’s the right question. Voting decisions carry fiduciary weight, and any tool that supports them needs to meet high standards of accuracy, transparency, and accountability.
ProxyBeacon is designed with those requirements in mind to enable teams to use AI with confidence.
AI extracts and structures information. It does not make judgment calls
ProxyBeacon’s AI reads proxy statements, annual reports, 8-Ks, 10-Ks, and other company disclosures, extracting relevant data and structuring it against your research templates. It then applies your voting policies to generate outputs aligned with your approach.
Judgement remains with you — your policies, your priorities, your thresholds. The AI’s role is to turn complex, unstructured documents into structured, comparable information.
Rule outputs are deterministic and rules-based
When you define a rule output in ProxyBeacon, it is applied as a set of explicit conditions. If a company triggers one, the output is consistent and predictable. There is no ambiguity about why the system reached a particular conclusion.
Every output is traceable to the source.
Every answer in a ProxyBeacon report links directly back to the underlying source document; the specific page, paragraph, or data point in the filing. Your team can verify any output in seconds, and auditors can trace the full chain from source to conclusion.
Strong focus on validation and preventing hallucinations
The system is designed to surface information that exists in the source material, not to generate plausible-sounding content. Where information is absent or ambiguous, ProxyBeacon flags it rather than filling the gap.
Who uses ProxyBeacon for proxy voting research?
ProxyBeacon is Tumelo's AI platform for proxy voting research and stewardship workflows. It enables stewardship teams at asset managers and asset owners to generate their own structured, fully sourced proxy research — aligned to their own policies, priorities, and reporting requirements.
Stewardship teams and asset managers
You’re responsible for voting across thousands of meetings each proxy season, applying policies consistently and producing defensible rationales for every decision.
ProxyBeacon supports this by enabling you to bring research and policy application in-house.
- Generate research at scale while maintaining consistency across votes
- Apply your firm’s policies directly, rather than relying on external interpretations
- Produce clear, auditable rationales for every decision
- Reduce time spent on manual document review and data extraction
Asset owners and pension trustees
You need visibility into how votes are being cast on your behalf — and increasingly, the ability to ensure they reflect your own stewardship priorities.
ProxyBeacon provides the tools to support more direct oversight and policy alignment.
- Access structured research to understand voting decisions in detail
- Define and apply your own governance priorities across holdings
- Challenge or validate manager decisions with evidence
- Strengthen accountability through transparent, auditable outputs
Firms reducing their reliance on proxy advisors
Whether you are moving away from external proxy advisory services or supplementing them, the challenge is building internal capability without adding significant operational burden.
ProxyBeacon enables firms to develop their own research capability without starting from scratch.
- Generate structured proxy research using your own frameworks
- Maintain consistency across large volumes of meetings
- Reduce dependency on standardised external recommendations
- Build internal capability without developing a proprietary platform
How ProxyBeacon and ProxySphere work together
ProxyBeacon and ProxySphere are complementary products that support different parts of the stewardship workflow, from research and policy design through to vote execution.
ProxySphere
ProxySphere enables voting rights to be passed through to underlying investors in pooled funds, allowing votes to be directed proportionally by the investors themselves.
- Distributes voting rights across pooled fund structures
- Enables investors to direct how votes are cast
- Supports pass-trhough voting at scale
ProxyBeacon
ProxyBeacon enables stewardship teams to generate research, define rules, and produce auditable outputs for each meeting.
- Generates structured proxy research from company disclosures
- Applies and tests your voting policies
- Produces consistent, auditable voting rationales
How they work together
The two systems are designed to connect by linking research, policy, and execution into a single workflow.
The result: a fully auditable chain from policy → research → vote.
See ProxyBeacon on a company you care about
Book a 30-minute demo and we’ll build a live report and flag set around your priorities.
Contact us
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Frequently asked questions
What is ProxyBeacon?
ProxyBeacon is Tumelo's AI platform for proxy voting research and stewardship workflows. It enables stewardship teams at asset managers and asset owners to generate their own structured, fully sourced proxy research — custom reports, governance flags, and rule outputs — aligned to their own priorities and auditable end to end.
How does ProxyBeacon differ from using a proxy advisor?
Traditional proxy advisors centralise research and recommendations, then distribute them at scale. ProxyBeacon enables stewardship teams to bring that work in-house. Teams design their own research reports, decide which data points matter, and generate rule outputs based on their own priorities — rather than adapting decisions from someone else's framework. Every output is traceable to the source document.
Does ProxyBeacon replace ISS or Glass Lewis?
ProxyBeacon can be used alongside existing proxy advisory services or as a standalone tool. Some teams use it to supplement their current providers with faster, more customised research. Others are using it to reduce or replace their reliance on external advisory firms entirely. The choice is yours.
How does AI work? Can I trust the outputs?
ProxyBeacon's AI extracts and structures information from company filings — it does not make judgment calls. Rule outputs are deterministic and rules-based. Every output is traceable to the specific source document and data point. The system is designed to surface information that exists in the filings, not to generate plausible-sounding content. Where information is absent or ambiguous, ProxyBeacon flags it.
What happens if the AI gets something wrong?
Every output links back to the underlying source, so your team can verify any answer in seconds. ProxyBeacon is designed to support your analysts, not replace them. If something doesn't look right, you can trace it, adjust how the question is framed, or supplement it with additional analysis before relying on it for a vote or engagement.
Can I use ProxyBeacon alongside my existing proxy advisor?
Yes. Many teams use ProxyBeacon to generate their own in-house research alongside third-party recommendations. This gives you a second perspective — one that reflects your own policies and priorities — without requiring you to switch providers immediately.
How quickly does ProxyBracon generate reports?
Structured, fully sourced research reports can be generated within hours of a meeting being announced. For routine meetings, outputs are available almost immediately. This means your team has research in hand while there's still time to act on it — rather than receiving it days before the deadline.
Can I build and back-test my own voting policies?
Yes. ProxyBeacon lets you define voting policies using natural language, apply them by market, sector, or theme, and back-test them against historical voting data. You can update your rules at any time without waiting for an annual review cycle.
Is ProxyBeacon available outside the UK?
Yes. ProxyBeacon works with company filings from any market. It is currently being used by stewardship teams covering global equity portfolios.
How does ProxyBeacon relate to ProxySphere?
ProxyBeacon is the research layer and ProxySphere is the voting infrastructure. ProxyBeacon helps you with stewardship analysis; ProxySphere enables you to execute voting in pooled funds through pass-through voting. The two systems are designed to work together.