Hymans Engage

Why is engagement valuable?

Engagement forms a vital part of stewardship, although it’s highly intermediated. Asset managers typically engage directly with companies on behalf of their clients. Asset owners can also engage, and while this can sometimes be directly with companies, asset owners more commonly engage with their asset managers. 

There are many reasons to engage: to gather information, to interrogate activity and to influence behaviour and the outcomes achieved. All serve a purpose, but engagement is increasingly being seen as a means of managing the gap between an asset owner’s expectations and asset manager’s activities. Engagement can help asset owners to clearly articulate expectations but also influence policy, helping to close the gap. 

Designing for positive impact

We’ve created a simple but effective framework to help clients make the most of stewardship as a strategic tool to improve long-term performance. Examples of the sort of impact we’ve had include broadening the scope of an asset manager’s stewardship philosophy, through to a global asset manager introducing a new stewardship service that takes a more ambitious approach to addressing climate-related issues.