Why this matters

Investor engagement is one of the most widely used stewardship tools, yet:
✦ disclosures remain inconsistent and difficult to compare
✦ outcomes are often unclear or selectively reported
✦ asset owners lack a systematic way to assess engagement quality
In practice, there is currently no widely adopted, cross-market template for documenting engagement activity. Most investors rely on internally developed formats or initiative-specific reporting structures, limiting comparability across the market.
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Rather than building on an established standard, this work starts from a fragmented landscape in which most investors have developed their own internal approaches to engagement reporting. This challenge is increasingly recognized across the industry. Recent commentary, including from the Investment Association, has highlighted the growing reporting burden created by fragmented and overlapping stewardship frameworks, alongside the lack of consistent formats for engagement disclosure.
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At the same time, growing volumes of engagement data are being disclosed. The missing piece is a shared structure for how engagement activity is documented and evidenced. Without this, both: peer learning, and rigorous analysis of effectiveness remain limited.

Across our work on voting and engagement data, we have already collected:We've already collected:
‍

$140T+

in global assets under management covered
with voting records

700+

investors' voting
records

65+

investors' engagement
disclosures

30,000+

companies ' meetings tracked

Our approach

This project focuses squarely on engagement disclosure as an enabling layer for comparability and research into effectiveness.

We are:

reviewing dozens of stewardship reports and engagement disclosures from leading asset managers
conducting expert interviews with investors, service providers, and civil society
analyzing patterns across our database of thousands of engagements drawn from public disclosures
iterating on our disclosure template, building on two years of development through our Collective Insight initiative

Together, these inputs allow us to:

surface recurring structures in high-quality disclosures
identify gaps and inconsistencies across the market
understand practical constraints faced by reporting teams

What we are developing

Engagement Disclosure Template 3.0
a structured template bringing consistency to currently heterogeneous disclosure practices, defining:

core data fields for engagement cases
levels of disclosure detail (from minimum to advanced)
consistent ways to describe objectives, actions, and outcomes

Guidance on evidence and use cases
A companion guidance document outlining:

what constitutes meaningful engagement evidence
how disclosure can support internal decision-making (e.g. for asset owners)
how standardized structures can reduce reporting burden for asset managers and service providers

From disclosure to effectiveness

While this project focuses on disclosure, its purpose is broader. By improving how engagement is documented, we aim to enable:

clearer identification of what works in practice
stronger foundations for quantitative and qualitative effectiveness analysis
more comparable assessment of engagement approaches

Rather than defining best practice in isolation, we are:

surfacing emerging consensus based on observed practice
co-developing the framework with market participants

This approach allows us to reflect both what is methodologically robust, and what is practically implementable.

Limitations and open questions

We recognize several challenges:‍

variation in how investors define and track engagements
differences in internal systems and data availability
biases in voluntary disclosures
the difficulty of linking activity to outcomes

Addressing these constraints is part of the project itself.

Get involved

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Advancing Engagement Effectiveness through Better Disclosure