About us
Get the facts: Vanguard puts everyday investors at the center of all we do
December 13, 2022
As the only investor-owned asset manager, the interests of our more than 30 million individual investor clients are at the center of everything we do.
Our company is owned by its member funds, which in turn are owned by fund shareholders. With no outside owners to satisfy, we focus squarely on meeting the long-term investment needs of our investors.
The money we manage belongs to our investors, not Vanguard.
Vanguard is an asset manager, not an asset owner. The assets we manage belong to the investors who have entrusted Vanguard to grow their savings over time. Because our investors are our owners, our interests are directly aligned with helping everyday investors generate long-term value and achieve their financial goals.
We help investors keep more of their returns.
Our investor-owned structure means we can offer high-quality funds and ETFs that are among the lowest-cost in the industry. This enables Vanguard investors to keep more of their returns to pay for college, save for retirement, or start a business. In fact, we have reduced fees and investment minimums across all products, strategies, and asset classes more than 2,000 times since our founding in 1975.
Vanguard does not boycott any company or industry.
We do not boycott companies, industries, or sectors of the economy, and that includes energy. We believe that investors should have choices, and we provide a range of low-cost, high-quality investment options that investors can choose from based on their individual goals and preferences. Vanguard currently offers 288 index mutual funds/ETFs and 124 actively managed funds/ETFs, including both energy sector funds and ESG funds.
Importantly, we don’t direct the investments our clients make. Investors select the investments most appropriate for them from our broad range of options based on their individual preferences, priorities, and risk tolerance.
We are piloting ways to give investors a greater voice in proxy voting.
We recognize that our clients have diverse perspectives, and a growing number would like the option to weigh in on how their index funds vote on important proxy questions at the companies held in their funds. In early 2023, we will begin piloting ways to provide individual investors the opportunity to participate more directly in the proxy voting process, gathering feedback from clients and other stakeholders along the way.
Our focus is on long-term value creation.
Vanguard seeks to promote long-term value creation for investors in our funds, leaving management and policy decisions to companies and elected officials. Our proxy votes and engagements with companies on material financial risks are based on principles of strong corporate governance and an unwavering focus on promoting long-term financial value creation for shareholders.
Our approach to climate risk is about safeguarding investor returns.
Climate change along with the resulting global response is having far-reaching economic consequences for companies and financial markets, and therefore for investors. As a result, climate risk is a material financial risk for certain companies and their shareholders’ long-term financial success. We take this risk to our investors’ returns seriously. On behalf of our internally managed equity funds, Vanguard’s Investment Stewardship team engages with those companies to better understand how boards disclose, address, and oversee material risks, including climate risk.
Important information:
Vanguard ETF Shares are not redeemable with the issuing Fund other than in very large aggregations worth millions of dollars. Instead, investors must buy and sell Vanguard ETF Shares in the secondary market and hold those shares in a brokerage account. In doing so, the investor may incur brokerage commissions and may pay more than net asset value when buying and receive less than net asset value when selling.
All investing is subject to risk, including possible loss of the money you invest. Funds that concentrate on a relatively narrow market sector face the risk of higher share-price volatility.
ESG portfolios are subject to ESG investment risk, which is the chance that the stocks or bonds screened by the index provider or advisor, as applicable, for ESG criteria generally will underperform the market as a whole or, in the aggregate, will trail returns of other portfolios screened for ESG criteria. The index provider or advisor assessment of a company, based on the company’s level of involvement in a particular industry or their own ESG criteria, may differ from that of other portfolios or an investor’s assessment of such company. As a result, the companies deemed eligible by the index provider or advisor may not reflect the beliefs and values of any particular investor and certain screens may not exhibit positive or favorable ESG characteristics. The evaluation of companies for ESG screening or integration is dependent on the timely and accurate reporting of ESG data by the companies. The advisor may not be successful in assessing and identifying companies that have or will have a positive impact or support a given position. In some circumstances, companies could ultimately have a negative or no impact or support of a given position. The weight given to ESG factors for active non-ESG funds may vary across types of investments, industries, regions and issuers; may change over time; and not every ESG factor may be identified or evaluated. Where ESG risk factor analysis is used as one part of an overall investment process (as is the case for actively managed equity and fixed income non-ESG Funds), such Funds may still invest in securities of issuers that all market participants may not view as ESG-focused or that may be viewed as having a high ESG risk profile.
