The year 2025 marked a turning point for shareholder engagement, particularly in the United States. Recent laws and regulations (Rule 14a-8 on shareholder resolutions, for example), by giving asset managers greater power, actually reflect an implicit recognition of the strategic strength of engagement: a lever capable of influencing corporate governance and strategy. At the same time, many asset owners (such as The People’s Pension in the UK in 2025, or other major European pension funds) have reallocated their assets and switched managers, often for reasons linked to stewardship (i.e. the responsible exercise of shareholder rights) and the integration of ESG risks, providing a concrete illustration of the potential impact of these practices.
In light of these developments, it is crucial for European investors to fully embrace shareholder engagement to align performance with responsibility.
To gain a clearer picture, we have examined 10 key UK financial players in light of the new requirements of the UK Stewardship Code, to understand how they structure their practices and track their commitments. Several clear lessons emerge.
Based on the analysis of the practices of 10 UK players, it appears that measuring engagement remains a complex exercise. The value actually created by the investor’s actions, particularly in terms of stewardship, remains difficult to assess. To help investors better monitor and structure their engagement activities, we have identified five key steps – which are not yet widely standardised by regulatory frameworks – providing a concrete starting point for establishing effective and measurable monitoring of engagement practices.
First and foremost, it is essential to define precisely what constitutes an engagement action. There is indeed a fundamental difference between standard dialogue and an engagement action that is intentional and focused on concrete impact.
In our study, 8 out of the 10 actors analysed explicitly distinguish between these two types of interaction, naming them in different ways depending on their practices.
This distinction is crucial: it guides the actions taken and enables reporting to be comparable. For example, Standard Life, in its Stewardship Report for 2025 covering the 2024 financial year, states that ‘asking a question about ESG issues during a meeting does not necessarily characterise the interaction as engagement’.
Today, definitions remain highly varied and have not yet been standardised within regulatory frameworks, making the figures difficult to interpret. The data we have observed illustrates this variability: the total number of engagements ranges from 66 to 5,650 for the year 2024, whilst the number of companies involved ranges from 50 to 3,589. This disparity reflects differences in the definition of a commitment and in reporting practices.
When reporting on commitments, it is essential to specify what is meant by a commitment and not to limit oneself to a mere figure, which only makes sense with a clear definition.
Once the engagement has been defined, it is important to structure its monitoring through consistent statuses or stages, which allow each action to be situated within its lifecycle. This progression does not directly assess success or the achievement of objectives, but serves to organise and monitor actions in a structured manner.
Best practices observed among UK and European stakeholders show that using a clear scale of statuses facilitates the monitoring and reporting of commitments, whilst providing visibility on the progress of interactions with companies. For example, ShareAction, a London-based NGO, offers in its Best Practice Engagement Reporting Template categories such as: ‘ongoing’, ‘escalated’, and ‘closed’, allowing the progress of each engagement to be indicated.
A concrete example from Aberdeen’s Stewardship Report 2025 (financial year 2024) illustrates this approach: the financial institution has defined a comprehensive lifecycle for priority engagements, comprising the following stages:
This approach enables the progress of engagements to be tracked, actions to be prioritised, and internal or external reporting to be organised. It also provides a basis for assessing long-term impact, even if it does not directly measure the success of the action at this stage.
Defining these statuses from the outset helps create a common framework for all management teams, facilitates longitudinal monitoring and ensures consistency in reporting, particularly in a context where regulatory standards remain limited.
Tracking the progress of a commitment initiative is not just about knowing where things stand: it also involves centralising and tracking all information relating to that initiative in real time. However, in our study, we found that only half of the players analysed have a dedicated tool, even though these are major UK players, some of whom have large teams dedicated to stewardship.
This proportion shows that engagement monitoring practices are not yet structured, and that many investors still use unsuitable solutions, such as Excel, to track often complex, multi-stakeholder interactions when several investors decide to undertake an engagement initiative together, thereby carrying more weight than if they were acting individually.
A dedicated tool offers several advantages:
Tools may be internal or external. For example, in its Stewardship & Advocacy Report, Impax states: “Company engagements are recorded in Impax’s proprietary data and research platform, Portal, including dates, issues engaged and discussed, name and title of the Impax and investee company representatives, the means of communication with companies, outcomes and next steps.”
WeeFin has co-developed a module dedicated to engagement with a financial institution, enabling commitments to be tracked and analysed centrally. It is particularly useful for teams wishing to coordinate multiple contacts, document each interaction, and optimise the production of reports and analytics. For further information, please do not hesitate to contact our team.
For a commitment to be considered successful or achieved, it is first essential to define what that means. However, in our study, only 4 out of 10 organisations have formalised this definition in their engagement policy.
Furthermore, 7 out of 10 stakeholders track their engagement objectives, often using intermediate milestones. However, few of them clearly define what each milestone entails.
Certain practices stand out, however. For example, Mirova in this article, ‘What makes shareholder engagement successful?’, has established a structured framework for assessing the success of engagements, identifying three main categories of outcomes:
The achievement of specific milestones such as changes to internal policy, often graded by the investor,
Observable results at company level, for example: reduction in GHG emissions, improved transparency or adoption of science-based targets,
Results in the capital markets, such as improved ESG ratings or reduced financial risks.
According to the results of our study, we note that most stakeholders focus primarily on the first point, namely the achievement of milestones relating to internal policy changes. None of the 10 stakeholders studied directly measures impacts on the capital markets, such as changes in ESG ratings or reductions in financial risk.
However, linking ESG ratings and their evolution to engagement actions can provide insights into the real impact of investors and the progress of engaged companies.
Measuring additionality remains a major challenge, however. It is difficult to isolate the impact of shareholder engagement, as numerous external factors simultaneously influence the company, including its own willingness to act. Furthermore, the actual impact can be difficult to assess: the ambitions announced through the adoption of plans or targets do not always translate into meaningful sustainable actions.
To assess success consistently, it would be useful to define common criteria that take into account the investment horizon and the intentionality of the engagement, in order to compare and measure results in a more standardised manner.
Formalising from the outset what constitutes a ‘successful’ engagement, following clear milestones and, where possible, linking these actions to ESG indicators and the company’s concrete results, provides an effective basis for assessing real impact and limiting biases in measuring additionality.
Reporting is the final but essential step in making the actions and impact of shareholder engagement visible. As we have emphasised throughout this study, figures alone are not enough: they depend directly on the definitions used to characterise an engagement. Without clear and substantiated definitions, data cannot be compared across stakeholders and loses its informative value.
Case studies are particularly useful for illustrating engagement actions. When well-structured, they enable the presentation of: the issues addressed, the participants involved, the objectives pursued, the frequency of interactions, and interim results. The new version of the UK Stewardship Code recommends using these elements (among others) to report on engagements and their progress (What makes a useful case study?).
It is also important not to limit oneself to reporting successes. Engagement is a time-consuming process: some initiatives are still ongoing and their impact cannot be measured immediately. Highlighting only successes could give an incomplete and biased picture of the engagement policy.
Another key point concerns the level of reporting: fund vs entity. Today, annual reports are often limited to the entity level, which prevents the tracking of practices specific to each fund. However, certain funds labelled SRI in France or SDR (e.g. Improvers) in the UK have developed distinctive engagement practices. Including these in reporting would provide a comprehensive understanding of practices and better highlight initiatives at portfolio level.
Effective reporting thus combines reliable annual figures, based on clear definitions of engagement; detailed case studies illustrating actions and progress on engagements; a focus on ongoing initiatives rather than just successes; and sufficient granularity, including at fund level, to reflect the diversity of practices within the organisation.
Structured and comprehensive reporting is therefore a strategic tool for demonstrating the added value of shareholder engagement and supporting transparency towards investors and stakeholders.
In short, whilst shareholder engagement is establishing itself as an essential lever for steering companies towards more sustainable practices, its full effectiveness still largely depends on the ability of stakeholders to better structure, monitor and measure its impact.
The practices observed show real progress, but also significant room for improvement, particularly in terms of defining, standardising and measuring additionality. In a changing landscape, where regulatory frameworks still play a partially structuring role, these issues are becoming central to lending credibility to and strengthening the role of investors.
Our full analysis, including detailed examples and operational recommendations, will be published in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.
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