Proxy Voting: Asset Managers Increased Their Support for Management in 2025

Regulators took on proxy voting in 2025, amid concerns that proxy advisors and large index investors are increasingly opposing management objectives. But our latest research on voting trends by the largest US asset managers shows that the largest firms are increasingly likely to back the management stance at shareholder meetings.

We saw the Securities and Exchange Commission narrow the scope of permissible shareholder proposals toward the beginning of the year. And toward the end, a White House executive order placed further scrutiny on proxy-vote advisors.

Concerns that proxy advisors’ recommendations “advance and prioritize radical politically-motivated agendas” and serve “as a vehicle for investment advisers to coordinate … their voting decisions” featured strongly. Elsewhere, the claim that “large index firms [use] their voting blocs to advance sweeping ESG [environmental, social and governance] initiatives” is proving hard to dispel.

However, our latest research on voting trends by the largest US asset managers over the last three years tells a different story.

Proxy-Voting Trends Tilt in Favor of Company Management

Our latest research paper looks at the proxy-voting patterns of 50 of the largest US managers of equity and allocation funds. We found that, as a group, voters at these entities have become more supportive of management over recent years.

Average support for management resolutions at companies in the Morningstar US Large-Mid Cap Index increased in the 2025 proxy year to just over 96% from close to 95% in the prior two years. The increase was largely driven by greater support for director elections, which make up around 78% of all management resolutions each year.

There has also been a noticeable increase in support for advisory votes on executive compensation proposals in the last three proxy years. However, these particular management proposals remain the ones most likely to be opposed by shareholders, with an average of at least 10% of shareholders voting against them each year.

Meanwhile, over the same period, average support for shareholder resolutions fell. The chart above shows that shareholder proposals on environmental and social themes fared worst, with these bearing the strongest impacts from the SEC’s actions during the year.

Size Really Does Matter in Proxy Voting

However, when we split the top 50 US asset managers according to size, what we see is the opposite of coordinated activity.

In fact, there’s a marked divergence between the voting patterns of the largest 10 US asset managers and the other 40 US managers in the study. The top 10 include the Big Three index managers: BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street; plus Capital Group, Dimensional, Fidelity, including funds subadvised by Geode, Invesco, J.P. Morgan, Schwab, and T. Rowe Price.

Looking first at management resolutions, shown on the chart above, we see the top 10 asset managers recorded the strongest increases in support for management resolutions. Average support for management resolutions among the top 10 US managers increased to 97.5% in the 2025 proxy year compared with 97.1% in 2024 and 96.1% in 2023.

Among the Big Three index managers, we observed the same trend with higher support levels. On average, the Big Three managers backed 98.7% of management resolutions in the 2025 proxy year, compared with 98.0% in 2024 and 96.0% in 2023. In contrast, the remaining 40 US managers’ average support stood at around 94% to 95% over the past three years, with a slight increase in 2025.

In the past three proxy years, average percentage support for shareholder resolutions by the Big Three index managers stood in single digits. In 2025, this number stood at 7.5%, having fallen from around 9.0% in the previous two proxy years.

We also observed a falling trend in support for the top 10 as a whole. On average, the 10 firms cast 12.4% of their fund votes in support of shareholder proposals in the 2025 proxy year, down slightly from 13.3% in 2024 and 15.2% in 2025.

The other 40 firms’ average support for shareholder resolutions also displayed a falling trend but stood consistently higher than that of the top 10 over the three-year period. In the 2025 proxy year, the 40 firms’ average support for shareholder resolutions was 28.8%, compared with 34.6% in 2024 and 38.2% in 2023.

What This Means for Investors

The key learning in all our findings is simple: Not all asset managers use proxy voting in the same way. The data indicate that smaller managers remain more willing than larger ones to back shareholder proposals or oppose management resolutions.

For individual investors who feel strongly about how their governance and sustainability preferences should be reflected in their portfolio, it’s important to know the differences in how each manager votes on those issues. Our research paper is a useful guide in this regard, outlining how the managers voted individually and in aggregate.

Understanding how your fund manager votes, and not just what it owns, can be an important part of aligning your investments with your governance and sustainability priorities.