Stewardship Code Signatory Survey Results

The Aotearoa New Zealand Stewardship Code recently completed a brief survey of Code signatories to better understand stewardship activity in New Zealand, and how the Code is influencing this. Topics within the survey included who had been part of collaborative engagements, what policy issues the signatories had engaged in, and what signatories are doing around building Māori competency. Below is a summary of the results.

Key findings from the survey

  • Signatories have strengthened their stewardship activities in the past year in the following ways:

    • 65% strengthened company engagement processes

    • 53% strengthened internal policies relating to stewardship 

    • 29% increased stewardship resourcing

  • The Code has strengthened organisations approaches to the following stewardship activities:

    • 71% reporting stewardship activities and outcomes 

    • 53% measuring stewardship activities and outcomes 

    • 53% stewardship related policies 

    • 47% collaborating with other industry stakeholders 

  • 47% of respondents expect to increase stewardship resourcing in the next year

  • 53% of respondents said the key barrier to increasing stewardship outcomes is insufficient resourcing

  • 82% of respondents have engaged on policy issues in the past year

Other results from the survey include:

  • 59% of respondents have participated in a collaborative engagement in the past year

  • 82% of respondents have engaged on policy issues in the past year, focused on topics including climate issues; modern slavery; increasing investing in private assets; and developing New Zealand’s sustainable finance taxonomy

  • 71% of respondents have started building Māori competency, mostly through internal training in Māori language or cultural awareness 

  • 35% have begun incorporating this Māori understanding into investment policies or processes 

  • The most common barriers to reporting stewardship activities were:

    • 65% too many competing reporting requirements 

    • 59% time taken to complete reports 

    • 41% data quality problems 

  • The most common barriers to the growth of stewardship in NZ are:

    • 53% insufficient stewardship resourcing 

    • 47% insufficient stewardship capability

Jackson Rowland