Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. (ISS) has released 2015 updates to its benchmark proxy voting policies for the Americas, EMEA, and Asia-Pacific region. Key benchmark policy changes in the U.S. include ISS’s adoption of a “scorecard” approach to evaluating equity plans, whereby recommendations will largely be based on a combination of factors related to (1) plan cost, (2) plan features, and (3) grant practices. Under the new Equity Plan Scorecard approach, cost will be weighted 45%, grant practices 35%, and plan features 20%, with roughly a dozen individual factors underlying each of these three pillars. For additional details on these and other ISS 2015 benchmark policy updates, visit the ISS Policy Gateway [1].