rezonanz's 2025 global "Voting For Sustainability" ranking exposes divide in sustainability voting among institutional investors

Zurich, Switzerland — rezonanz today releases its 2025 Voting for Sustainability global ranking, assessing how institutional investors — including both asset owners and asset managers — used their shareholder voting rights this proxy season to influence corporate sustainability practices. Now in its second year, the ranking nearly triples its coverage to 404 investors, offering the most comprehensive view yet of sustainability-aligned voting.

The results show a clear global divide led by Europe’s public and occupational pension funds. Nordic and Dutch funds dominate the top quartile, while major U.S. index managers such as BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street cluster near the bottom. On average, asset owners score approximately 20% higher than mainstream asset managers on sustainability-related votes, quantifying a gap long discussed in the industry but not previously measured at this scale.

“We are the first to quantify, at global scale across hundreds of funds, what many practitioners have only spoken to qualitatively,” said Eleanor Willi, CEO and co-founder of rezonanz. “The aggregate gap is larger than we expected. European public funds, in particular, are using their voting power to signal what sustainability should mean in practice.”

The ranking applies Bayesian Item Response Theory (IRT) modelling — advanced techniques commonly used in political science — to measure how investors’ voting patterns differentiate them from their peers on a key set of sustainability-related proposals. This consensus benchmark draws on recommendations and flags from six leading organizations to sharply focus on sustainability-relevant agenda items, not the “routine” votes comprising the majority of AGMs’ dockets. These organizations include Ethos, ShareAction, IIGCC, PIRC, The Shareholder Commons, and Majority Action.

“This is not a list of who voted ‘for’ the most environmental and social shareholder proposals,” noted Dr. Siyana Gurova, rezonanz co-founder and political scientist. “Each proposal carries a different weight: some are symbolic, others decisive. By accounting for how informative each vote is, the model reveals deeper patterns showing which investors consistently use their influence to advance sustainability standards."

The assessment covers 425 key proposals from the 2025 proxy season, including climate transition planning, AI oversight, human rights due-diligence, corporate political spending, and board votes at lagging companies.

The 2025 top five asset managers are:
1. Banque Cantonale Vaudoise (CH)
2. Domini Impact Investments (US)
3. Trillium Asset Management (US)
4. ASR Vermogensbeheer N.V. (NL)
5. Sparinvest S.A. (LU)

Asset owners’ detailed rankings are available confidentially to each fund via secure login, while asset manager quartiles are publicly reported via rezonanz’s Report.

About rezonanz

rezonanz is a Zurich-based stewardship intelligence platform. We use advanced analytics and machine learning to reveal how institutional investors exercise their influence through proxy voting and corporate engagement. Our platform helps a global clientele of asset owners, asset managers, expert advisors, and companies understand investor behavior, benchmark stewardship positioning, and help strengthen the link between capital and real-world outcomes.

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