ISS Governance Profiling Solution Expands Coverage, Enhances Methodology

ROCKVILLE, MD (October 31, 2016) – Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. (ISS), a leading provider of governance and responsible investment solutions to the global financial community, today announced the rebranding and new release of ISS QualityScore, ISS’ state-of-the-art global corporate governance scoring solution for institutional investors.

As part of the release, the QualityScore methodology will be enhanced to provide users with deeper actionable insights, particularly in the areas of board composition and shareholder rights at U.S. companies. Effective November 21, subscribers to ISS QualityScore will be able to view granular details regarding proxy access provisions, such as ownership thresholds, holding periods, and certain restrictions on the number of shareholder nominees and the ability to act in concert. Increased coverage of board composition issues, such as additional refreshment and diversity measures, will also be added for the U.S. market.

Globally, methodology changes will impact coverage of companies in a number of jurisdictions, including through the implementation of ISS’ pay-for-performance quantitative evaluation for the entire universe of European companies (ex-Russia) and, separately, more closely harmonizing company evaluations across connected capital markets such as China, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Notably, the pending release will take into account significant recent changes to Japan’s governance landscape with that market seeing an additional 20 factors applicable to companies within the coverage universe.

Meanwhile, coverage expansion adds new companies in Singapore and Korea, with further increases planned for 2017 in the broader Asia-Pacific region. ISS QualityScore’s total global coverage will increase to approximately 5,600 companies across 30 markets following the pending updates.

“With the November 21 release, institutions using ISS QualityScore will soon be able to tap into far richer and more relevant data sets to aid in global portfolio investment decision-making,” said John Roe, Head of ISS Analytics, the data and analytics arm of Institutional Shareholder Services. “Our agility and expertise helps ensure that the ISS QualityScore methodology reflects the latest trends in global governance in a timely manner with underlying data that is tried and trusted by an array of financial market participants.”

At its core, ISS QualityScore is designed to help investors identify and measure corporate governance risk across portfolio companies. ISS QualityScore provides a score for each company in its coverage universe that measures the company’s level of corporate governance risk, both overall and within four broad pillars: board structure, compensation/remuneration, shareholder rights, and audit & risk oversight.

Importantly, ISS QualityScore subscribers have the ability to access and analyze the underlying data from which the scores are generated, allowing them to screen portfolio companies against hundreds of corporate governance factors or perform detailed side by side comparisons of two or more companies’ profiles.

For more on ISS QualityScore, please click here to download our technical document.

ISS is rebranding its governance scoring solution to “ISS QualityScore” to better reflect institutional investors’ use of the rating as a quality measure for portfolio companies.

“With these latest enhancements to ISS QualityScore, we believe the time is right to better describe the solution as the market’s trusted measurement of governance value,” said Marija Kramer, ISS’ Head of Product Development. “Alongside ISS QualityScore, we will continue with our commitment to provide our clients the latest in tools and services to aid in their investment decision-making processes.”