Driven by both voluntary and statutory initiatives, investors are finding it hard to keep up with evolving disclosure requirements. In fact, it has become a key resource challenge, with investors spending nearly 20% of stewardship resources on reporting alone.
Using Esgaia's Engagement Disclosure Service (EDS), Storebrand is one of the first asset managers in the world to enable automatic disclosures of engagement efforts on both entity and product-level directly via its website.
Summary
Using Esgaia technology, Storebrand has automated the disclosure of certain engagement data via its website. Its primary objectives have been to;
save time and resources in reporting,
improve transparency, and
enable quicker information access to clients.
Storebrand can easily manage this service directly on the Esgaia platform, including which funds, modules, and descriptions to apply. With a simple iframe code, they can add additional “embeds” to their website at any time.
- In this short case study, we outline the background, solution and implementation of this product.
Client
Storebrand Asset Management is a leading player in the Nordic market and a pioneer in the field of sustainable investments. We have been at the forefront of sustainable investing since the mid-1990s and are one of the founding signatories of the PRI. Storebrand AM is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Storebrand ASA, which is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange. The Storebrand Group dates back to 1767, and currently provides a wide selection of strategies under the brands of Storebrand, SKAGEN, Delphi, Storebrand Fonder, and Cubera, with a total AuM exceeding EUR 100 bn.
Challenge
Today, investors in most jurisdictions are expected to report on their engagement and voting activities to stakeholders. This information should be easy to access and understand by different user groups, and be provided on a regular basis. The regularity of such reporting is often annually, but this does not account for the increasing amount of other (ad hoc) requests from internal and external stakeholders.
In general, reporting tasks often consist of the following:
Reporting expectations: Monitor stakeholder regulations and voluntary initiatives requirements (stewardship codes, etc.)
Data collection: Retrieve and update records across teams for data completeness
Interpretation and analysis: Collate, analyze and prepare data
Report preparation: Develop content, structure reports and publish disclosures
As evidenced by these steps and the aforementioned research, stewardship reporting can easily devour resources. Not surprisingly then, simplifying reporting has become a primary use case and value add of Esgaia’s software.
Solution
One of our commitments to clients is to help innovate to raise the overall technological level in the industry. The EDS is one such example, where the ambition has been to help ease investors’ reporting burden and demonstration of stewardship efforts.
Using Esgaia and the EDS, investors can better tell the stewardship story by expanding the reporting strategy with a cost-effective solution. Our platform, together with this new web-based reporting format, helps automate tasks 2, 3 and 4 above, while we will ensure it follows emerging disclosure practices.
At this point, it is particularly suitable for the more quantitative engagement insights, such as the number of engaged companies, engagements, activities, ESG category and topics. It is not intended to replace annual stewardship reports, but to enhance the overall reporting strategy and capacity.
Investor implementation
With Storebrand being the first client using the EDS, Esgaia’s tech team collaborated with Stewardship professionals at their side to implement certain product enhancements.
Storebrand can easily manage this service directly on the Esgaia platform, including which funds, modules, and descriptions to apply. By accessing a simple iframe code consisting of a couple of HTML-rows, Storebrand then smoothly integrated this data onto its own website.
Results
Together with Storebrand we strongly believe this provides an important building block to help save time and resources in reporting, improve transparency, and enable quicker information access to clients.
While the verdict is still out on measuring the longer-term outcomes of these objectives, one thing is clear: technology will only help to improve investors’ business and operational performance, this time by empowering their engagement management and reporting strategy.
Victoria Lidén, Responsible for active ownership & corporate governance at Storebrand Fonder AB:
- “I feel proud that we at Storebrand Fonder now can show our active ownership activities in a very transparent way. Anyone who is curious can at any time access the dashboard on our website and see which sustainability issues we have discussed with the companies in the respective fund, says Victoria Lidén. We will now continue our work with the support from Esgaia to further improve the tool and make more information available about our active ownership".
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