Envestnet partnership brings personalized proxy voting to advisors and clients

Envestnet is teaming up with voting technology provider iconik to help advisors give their clients access to personalized and automated shareholder voting.

Announced Monday, the partnership between Envestnet and the solution billed as the first customizable proxy voting platform for financial advisors brings enhanced voting solutions to those using the firm's Sustainable Quantitative Portfolios. 

Envestnet leaders said the goal is to give individual investors a way to better reflect their views in the voting process and was motivated by increased investor demand for choice.

Kiley Miller, principal director of sustainable investing at Envestnet said giving investors the power to make their voices heard through proxy voting is a powerful tool for advisors to establish and expand relationships with new and existing clients.

"Through the innovative technology that iconik delivers, advisors and their clients not only have easier and more efficient access to voting, but investors are able to also play a more active role in the capital markets and connect more deeply to the companies in which they are invested," Miller said.

The tech at the core of the new offering is the iconik "VoteForge" engine. According to the company, VoteForge helps resolve operational hurdles related to proxy voting, allowing investors to create customized voting profiles consistent with their values, preferences and priorities. Users can also opt to select a preset profile.

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Once ready, an advisor using the service activates "auto-voting" and iconik does the rest, according to the company. Users choose how involved they want to be, ranging from "set it and forget it" to monthly summaries or notifications for important votes. 

Reporting on key ballot items, and the outcomes of those ballot items, is accessible through a dashboard where advisors can view relevant voting metrics and then share those results with clients.

Officials said iconik is not charging a fee for the first year to utilize the service. Fees after the first year of use are determined by iconik and are outlined by iconik prior to signing up for the service.

"Our partnership with iconik provides advisors who rely on the Envestnet ecosystem with a seamless mechanism that simplifies the process of exercising proxy votes on issues that matter most to their clients," Brandon Thomas, Envestnet co-founder, said in a statement. "We continue to hear about the democratization of proxy voting as an important development in the industry. Bringing this capability to advisors is the latest way we are helping them strengthen and customize the client experience."