The benefits of effective stewardship


Committing to stewardship principles encourages signatories to improve internal governance of investment management, to meet client and beneficiary expectations, and to improve efficient allocation of capital, while contributing towards sustainable outcomes for our environment, society, and economy. Doing so delivers benefits for both investors and companies.

Benefits for both investors and companies include:

  1. Utilising experience and insights: Investors have a wealth of experience, alongside unique perspectives and influence. Stewardship enables investors to share this experience with companies to help them create and preserve long term value.

  2. Identifying and influencing risks and opportunities: Stewardship involves active engagement with companies, providing additional perspectives to identify risks and opportunities that may improve the company’s performance, which ultimately benefits the investor too.

  3. Creating and preserving long term value: Through this active engagement, investors increase their ability to create and preserve long term value with the companies they invest in, meeting both company goals and investment mandates.

Stewardship Case Studies

Case studies
Collaborative policy engagement
Collaborative policy engagement

Investors can use their influence to tackle risks and opportunities at a policy level too. Investors representing almost $300billion assets under management recently wrote to the New Zealand Government to outline their expectations that robust modern slavery legislation is enacted in New Zealand. Click here to read more.

Engaging with companies
Engaging with companies

Investors have unique perspectives and experience that can add value to companies, help them to overcome risks and capitalise on opportunities. Milford Asset Management have prepared a summary of the various investor engagements they have underway, covering environmental, social and governance topics. Click here to read more.

Stewardship also seeks to help investors: 

  • demonstrate to their clients and beneficiaries that their interests are at the core of the investor’s business model and conduct

  • provide confidence to regulators that investors meet standards for culture and conduct

  • enhance investors’ own ESG-integration practices (e.g., their approach to responsible ownership)

  • foster constructive relationships between investors and issuers

  • hold issuers to account over their sustainability claims and encourage their transition to long-term value creation and protection and sustainable outcomes for the environment and society

  • support investors to improve their investment practices to deliver sustainable outcomes

  • support issuers to improve their governance practices, and deliver sustainable outcomes

  • improve investor transparency on voting, engagement, and collaboration practices.