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Investment Association stewardship report

Posted on: February 10th, 2026

Investment Association stewardship report

The IA has published a new report ‘Realigning Stewardship: delivering sustainable value through stewardship’

The 10 recommendations are as follows:

  1. Embed stewardship into mandates and relationships between investment managers and asset owners to set realistic expectations about what stewardship can deliver for client objectives.
  2. Ensure transparency with clients about the potential impacts of specific investment objectives—particularly where these may limit the investible universe, require time horizon trade-offs, or affect returns.
  3. Encourage clients to articulate the type of stewardship that aligns with their investment objectives—whether focused on financially material company level issues or broader systemic themes and portfolio level risks and opportunities.
  4. Shift stewardship oversight toward assessing outcomes linked to value creation rather than activity-based metrics (such as number of engagements or votes against).
  5. Enhance stewardship reporting by including best practice case studies that illustrate when and how voting is used, and how voting works alongside other stewardship tools.
  6. Provide fund level transparency at the pre-appointment stage on how stewardship supports the fund’s investment strategy.
  7. Promote industry consistency by sharing best practice examples on the integration of stewardship into the investment process from the first round of reporting under the new Stewardship Code and encouraging the industry to speak with a single, coherent voice on key issues rather than having differing portfolio management or stewardship views.
  8. Reframe regulation and reporting to focus on delivering stewardship outcomes rather than activities.
  9. Increase Investment Consultant transparency on how they support good stewardship outcomes and help clients meet their Stewardship Code objectives.
  10. Better articulate the cost and value of stewardship reporting to ensure it provides decision useful information for clients.

 

Media release: https://www.theia.org/news/press-releases/investors-recommend-realignment-stewardship-deliver-sustainable-value

Download the full report here.