Who uses your voting rights as a shareholder?

‍You invest in equity funds through Vive. That makes you an indirect shareholder in hundreds of companies. Being a shareholder comes with voting rights. This article explains who uses those votes, what happens when they do, and what you can and cannot expect from it.

Why you are a shareholder without picking individual stocks

Vive invests part of the money in your plan in index funds spread across the world, depending on your risk profile. Our equity investments currently run through funds managed by Northern Trust. The fund buys the shares. You hold a stake in the fund.

Shares come with rights. One of these is the right to vote at the shareholders' meeting, the annual meeting where shareholders decide on matters such as the appointment of directors and their compensation.

Important to know: these votes are not cast by Vive. They are cast by Northern Trust, in accordance with Northern Trust's own voting policy. What Vive does is select the funds and monitor them afterward. One of our selection criteria is that an equity fund actively uses its voting rights and has a clear engagement strategy.

What is engagement?

Engagement literally means involvement. Put simply, it is the conversation an investor has with a company it invests in, with the aim of changing that company's behaviour.

The mechanism is simple. An index fund cannot just sell a stock, because it tracks the index. Talking and voting are therefore the two tools that remain. If enough large shareholders make the same point, it carries weight with the board.

What engagement is not: a guarantee. A conversation can lead nowhere. A vote can be lost. Vive has no sustainable investment objective and promises no outcome. We set requirements for the process, not for the result.

An example: executive compensation at Ericsson

Northern Trust's stewardship report for 2025 contains one case that runs from start to finish.

At the 2024 shareholders' meeting of the Swedish telecom company Ericsson, there was criticism regarding executive compensation. The performance metrics used for their bonuses were measured over only one year. Northern Trust’s standard is a minimum of three years. The reasoning: an executive should be evaluated on long-term results, not just one good year.

In October 2024, Northern Trust spoke with the chairman of Ericsson, who responded positively. The board faced a practical challenge: revenue in the telecom sector fluctuates significantly with the economy, making three-year targets difficult to set realistically. The proposal was therefore to use the average of three individual years instead of just one.

In January 2025, Ericsson invited its shareholders to explain its final plans. Northern Trust voted in favor. The proposal received 97.7% support.

So: an objection, a conversation, an adjustment, and a vote that confirms it.

One example proves nothing, so here are the numbers

A single good example from a hundred-page report says little. The totals say more.

In 2025, Northern Trust voted at 15,957 shareholders' meetings on more than 146,000 proposals. At 48% of those meetings, it voted against the board's advice on at least one point. Across all votes, 12% went against the board's advice, including 15% of proposals on pay. Northern Trust also held 420 meetings with 350 companies, compared with 276 meetings with 250 companies in 2024. At 218 of those 350 companies, progress was made on at least one goal.

The report also shows where Northern Trust is more cautious. It supported 15% of shareholder proposals on the environment and 23% of proposals on social topics. Every proposal is judged separately on whether it makes the company stronger in the long run, and that does not always lead to a vote in favour.

One more thing worth knowing. For the European and Asian pooled funds, engagement has so far run through an external party, EOS at Federated Hermes. That partnership ends on 31 March 2026. After that, Northern Trust will handle engagement with its own team, to bring voting and conversations closer together. We will be watching whether that shows up in the next report.

What does this mean for you?

In the short term, you will notice none of this. A changed pay plan at one company does not move the price of a global index fund. You will not see it in your return, and there is nothing you need to do.

In the long term, it is one of the few ways an index investor has any influence. Companies that face closer scrutiny on governance and pay are less likely to run into the kind of trouble that costs money.

However, engagement has its limits. This is influence, not control. Northern Trust represents part of the votes, not the majority.

In conclusion

You do not have to attend a shareholders' meeting yourself. What you can do is look at what happens on your behalf. Northern Trust's stewardship report is public and can be found here.