Introduction

Proxy voting has long been one of the most operationally demanding functions in asset management. A large institutional investor might vote on six thousand or more meetings in a single proxy season. Each meeting requires research, policy application, and a defensible rationale — produced under tight deadlines, often with limited resource. For most of the past two decades, the industry’s answer to this challenge has been outsourcing: delegating research to third-party proxy advisors whose benchmark recommendations could be applied at scale.

That model is now under significant pressure. The combination of rising expectations around fiduciary accountability, growing scrutiny of herding behaviour in institutional voting, and genuine advances in AI capability has prompted many stewardship teams to reconsider how much of the research and decision-making process should sit in-house. The recent announcement by JP Morgan that it is moving to an in-house AI platform for proxy advice reflects a broader industry shift that is likely to accelerate through 2026 and beyond. (more…)