Today the reporting cycle for the UN PRI begins. As the world’s biggest responsible investing initiative with > 5,000 investors and €130 tr in AuM, the redesigned reporting framework draws on extensive signatory feedback to provide an improved experience, enhancing both clarity and consistency, while reducing the overall effort. In this blog post, we focus on the reporting of investment stewardship and how Esgaia fits into the picture. The new reporting framework sends a strong signal to the industry about growing expectations in responsible investing across asset classes. With a focus on process and implementation, i.e. the HOW, the framework tries to balance reduced prescriptiveness with increased comparability, while accommodating for differences in investor size and style. Consisting of 12 modules with two types of indicators, ‘Core’ and ‘Plus’ indicators, the voluntary Plus indicators have an additional focus on outcomes to better understand signatories’ responsible investment practices' impact on the world and to outline leading practices. Evolving investment stewardship expectations The PRI defines stewardship as: ‘the use of influence by institutional investors to maximise overall long-term value, including the value of common economic, social and environmental assets, on which returns, and clients’ and beneficiaries’ interests depend’. With this in mind, stewardship on its own however is no longer enough. Whether the primary focus is to improve the risk-return profile of underlying investments or to improve outcomes, Signatories need to show the strategic intent of their stewardship and how it relates to investment decisions. This way, investors get to explain and exemplify their strategy in practice, including but not limited to investees and the broader sphere of influence, collaboration, proxy voting, and escalation. Key takeaways: Stewardship and engagement go beyond just listed equities to encompass every asset class. ESG materiality risks and impacts, and the management thereof, should now account for both single and double materiality. The importance of identifying suitable action points and levers of influence to impact sustainability outcomes and objectives. Inclusion of detailed reporting around the systematic sustainability issues of human rights and climate change, with scope for additional issues. How Esgaia can help While the reporting framework doesn’t explicitly mention the use of stewardship systems or supporting IT capabilities, we believe most investors understand the importance and benefits of adequate ESG data management and tracking. As it regards your investment stewardship, by structuring data capture, performance monitoring and information sharing, you’ll save important time and resources, hopefully increasing the overall quality of your stewardship. In relation to the reporting framework, Esgaia can help you; track engagements with current or potential investees (e.g. public companies), non-issuer stakeholders (e.g. external investment managers or policymakers), and dialogues with private companies and/or real assets. record activities conducted individually or collaboratively that contributed to desired changes in targeted entities. capture how stewardship activities and priorities are linked to investment decision-making and vice versa by supporting information-sharing between stewardship leads and investment decision-makers (if the two roles are separated). highlight different escalation measures by linking activities to engagement profiles, such as voting in favour of specific shareholder resolutions, provide a tool to systematically record intended and unintended sustainability outcomes connected to stewardship activities. Esgaia’s software is trusted and used by over 35 investors globally, collectively representing more than €3,5 trillion in AuM. If you’d like to know more about how our stewardship system can support you, please contact us! //Esgaia Team

This is an interview with Claudia Chapman, Head of Stewardship at the UK FRC (Financial Reporting Council). Q: Tell us a bit about your background and career, and how you came to focus on investment stewardship? I began my professional career in marketing and communications for the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), the global professional accountancy membership organisation. I was given the challenge of raising the profile and reach of their technical research publications. We developed this into the Research and Insights thought leadership programme and I soon became more interested in corporate governance and finance policy than marketing. After heading up policy and campaigns aimed at raising standards of corporate governance in markets aligned to ACCA’s growth markets, I had the opportunity to join the home of the UK Corporate Governance Code – the FRC. I joined the FRC to lead the project Corporate culture and the role of boards, sponsored by the late Sir Win Bischoff. We had incredible access to FTSE Chairs, chief executives, and their teams which gave us great insight into the challenge boards and organisations faced in curating a healthy culture. The observations of our report led to the inclusion of purpose and culture in the UK Corporate Governance Code. At the same time, I was supporting the exercise to tier the quality of reporting to the UK Stewardship Code 2012, so was then well-placed to lead the review of the Code in 2019. After extensive consultation, we published a substantially revised Code which took effect in 2020, with the first reports in 2021. Q: As Head of Stewardship at the UK FRC, what’s your work about and what are the FRC’s objectives when it comes to investment stewardship? In the early days of the revised Code, my focus was much more on establishing the team to develop a robust and fair assessment process to evaluate applications. This included engaging with prospective signatories about our expectations and feeding back to applicants on their reporting. We set a high bar for fair, balanced and understandable reporting against the principles of the Code, asking signatories to be transparent about their approach and the outcomes of their work. Now my role is more about working with other regulators, government departments and industry to evolve the framework for effective stewardship policy and regulation; and raise the standards of stewardship practice and reporting in the UK and globally through public engagement. The UK developed the first stewardship Code and has the most robust expectations and assessment process globally. We often work with other jurisdictions to share our experiences. Ensuring my team’s continuous development, so they have interesting and rewarding work, is also important. We’re gearing up to review the Code at the end of 2023, and are reviewing the evidence for effective stewardship and considering how expectations should evolve. The purpose of the FRC is to serve the public interest by setting high standards of corporate governance, reporting and audit and holding to account those responsible for delivering them. Our work sits at the heart of the FRC, even within a wide remit of financial reporting and regulation. Q: The FRC is responsible for the UK Corporate Governance and Stewardship Codes. Given how many investors face market-specific voluntary and statutory requirements, what’s your view on the collaboration between standard setters globally? In the areas of Corporate Governance and Stewardship, the UK has tended to lead the way so, although there are substantive differences in some areas, we see many other jurisdictions evolve their practice over time in line with the standards set in the UK. We work with a network chaired by the International Corporate Governance Network that brings together other bodies that oversee stewardship codes. The FRC has been supporting international efforts towards a common international framework for sustainability disclosures and welcomed the establishment of the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) in 2021 and are represented on the ISSB’s Sustainability Standards Advisory Forum. Q: Recognising the global influence of the UK stewardship code, with the update in 2020, what are some of the main developments you’ve seen over, say, the past five years? Historically, investment stewardship was predominantly an equity-only activity, but we expanded the Code to cover all assets under management and investors are expanding the scope of their practice to cover asset classes such as fixed income, real assets and private equity. We know from research we commissioned in 2021 that the Code has accelerated this. Bondholders may, for example, maintain an ongoing dialogue with issuers on ESG concerns to improve oversight of the related credit risks and improve the quality of issuances. Real estate investors are seeking out certifications, such as the GRESB rating, for their properties to validate the quality of sustainable enhancements. We anticipate that the way in which investors exert their influence and exercise their rights outside of listed equity will evolve rapidly in the next few years. Necessarily, we’re also seeing the growth in systemic or macro-stewardship. Investors, especially universal owners such as large index providers, pension funds and sovereign wealth funds, are looking beyond individual portfolio risk and seeking to address risks to the well-functioning of the entire financial system, to support wealth creation. We anticipate that collaboration between investors, regulators and other important stakeholders in the market will be vital to addressing systemic risks. We’ve also seen that the governance of stewardship and stewardship teams has risen in organisations. The Code requires the stewardship report to be reviewed by the board and signed off by the Chair, the Chief exec or Chief investment officer. Q: In a conversation recently, an asset manager noted how there’s a gap between current stewardship expectations and the willingness to pay for it. That is, while expectations continue to increase, asset owners are reluctant to pay extra for it. What do you make of this? Client expectations for stewardship have certainly increased in the last several years. Effective stewardship requires resources, which costs money and the investment in the number and expertise of teams varies significantly from manager to manager. It has been difficult to know what appropriate resourcing of investment stewardship looks like for different types and sizes of investors, and depending on the level of commitment to effective stewardship. The Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI) are working with the Thinking Ahead Institute (TAI) to research and assess the appropriate level of resources that investors should be prepared to dedicate to stewardship within their organisations, and we’re following that work with interest. Q: Coming back to the updated code, the FRC has published a number of reports to assess its influence on investor practices and reporting, what are some of the key findings in these? In the three years since the publication of the 2020 Code, we have released annual reports which review the quality of reporting assessed, clarify our expectations and feature examples of better-practice reporting. In that time we have noted improvements in the quality of activity and outcome reporting for engagement, collaboration and escalation, signatories’ contributions to addressing market-wide and systemic risks and improving the functioning of financial markets, and how signatories monitor and hold to account third parties, such as asset managers and service providers. When we published the Code back in 2019, we also committed to formally evaluating its impact. In 2021, we commissioned independent research by Minerva Analytics in collaboration with Durham University Business School and King’s College London which surveyed and interviewed applicants to the Code following their first application, but before they knew the outcome. We were really encouraged by the results which showed there was strong evidence of material changes to practice in the areas of governance, resourcing, stewardship activities, outcomes and reporting. Of those surveyed, 96% reported increases in the size of their stewardship teams since the introduction of the new Code. All organisations that the researchers spoke with said that they participate in some form of engagement and escalation with issuers, and 77% said that the quality of those engagements had improved since the introduction of the 2020 Code. Perhaps the most encouraging finding though was that asset owners reported that the Code has empowered them to monitor their investment managers more thoroughly and confidently. Q: On that note, where do you think investment stewardship is bound to go next? And from a regulatory perspective, what kind of oversight should we reasonably expect in the future? We’ll see greater professionalisation of stewardship. There’s a programme being launched in the Autumn by an organisation called StePS Stewardship Professionals which has been developed with the input of some highly regarded names in the profession. Stewardship in asset classes other than listed equity will become more widespread and sophisticated as investors identify the opportunity to influence the value of their investments and sustainability outcomes through engagement. Collaborating with others in the investment community to influence policymakers, regulators, standard setters, and issuers to address market-wide and systemic issues will become more mainstream, and expected practice by the providers of capital. Q: Time for final remarks, if you could ask for one thing of investors, what would it be? Remember that looking after other people’s money is a privilege and with that comes responsibility. Be clear about your intent, think about where you can have the most impact, and channel your resources appropriately. That’s four things! Thank you Claudia and good luck with the important work at the UK FRC! Interviewer: Rickard Nilsson, Head of Stewardship Success, Esgaia Interviewee: Claudia Chapman, Head of Stewardship, UK Financial Reporting Council About Claudia: As Head of Stewardship for the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), Claudia is responsible for the UK Stewardship Code, a world-leading voluntary code that sets expectations for investors when looking after their clients’ and members’ capital. Claudia led the review and update of the Code which took effect on 1 January 2020. She has just completed a secondment with the FCA, working on stewardship policy in the ESG Division and embedding stewardship with the Asset management supervision. Claudia grew up in Jamaica, before studying Geography at Cardiff University and is a Chartered Marketer.

The growth in responsible investing has driven a surge in data and research, which in turn is leading to a greater emphasis on data management and governance. In this blog, we explain the importance of data stewardship, and why it should be a central component in strategy, with dedicated resources and performance metrics. The age of data We live in an era where data creation is growing exponentially and will continue to do so over the foreseeable future. There’s no escaping increased exposure to and utility of data, the only thing to do, really, is to embrace it. Similar to the emergence of AI, instead of looking at it with skepticism, instinctively dismissing much of it as AI-washing, we need to stay curious and think of how we can leverage it in our work. Of course, curiosity levels have increased exponentially since the launch of ChatGPT, which for many has been an eye-opener. For example, there’s a difference between data largely geared toward measuring compliance, versus data leveraged as an asset to achieve certain impact goals: a recent McKinsey report on ESG governance within the banking sector, argues that banks “will need to adjust their data architecture, define a data collection strategy, and reorganize their data governance model to successfully manage and report ESG data”, Deloitte, on considerations for insurance firms’ identification and mitigation of greenwashing risks, outlines one action as to “Develop a robust ESG data strategy and target operating model to improve the completeness and accuracy of ESG risk data”, there are several initiatives such as the Industry Data for Society Partnership, the GovLab’s Data Collaboratives Explorer, and the Disclosure to Development Global Program, working to advance data stewardship and make it more accessible to promote social good. Implications for investors With continued growth in responsible investing, more and more data will need to be managed, which requires investors to prioritise data stewardship. As part of this journey, investors should also be thinking about information-sharing and disclosure efforts: ensuring accurate, timely access to information for internal usage, while producing high-quality, informative disclosures for external stakeholders can help enhance your practices and market influence. On that latter note, increasing transparency and disclosures are important components in serving the public good. However, Institutional investors and asset managers are often not transparent about their investment strategies, their engagement policy and the implementation thereof. Public disclosure of such information could have a positive impact on investor awareness, enable ultimate beneficiaries such as future pensioners to optimise investment decisions, facilitate the dialogue between companies and their shareholders, encourage shareholder engagement and strengthen their accountability to stakeholders and to civil society. Sounds familiar? The above paragraph is from the EU’s Shareholder Rights Directive (SRD II), which objective is to encourage and enhance long-term shareholder engagement and transparency between companies and investors in member states. Thus, with evolving stewardship expectations globally, there are strong arguments for investors to improve their data stewardship and disclosure efforts. Which, in instances, as exemplified above, can help establish or promote structures where the data itself becomes an asset, such as vote declarations via UN PRI’s Resolution Database. How can Esgaia help? We believe solid data management is a prerequisite for high-quality asset stewardship. Esgaia becomes your engagement software partner, helping you save time and improve quality by centralizing engagement management in a cloud-based environment. As such, we become an extension of our clients’ IT capabilities, helping you better record, monitor and report on your investment stewardship. Next step: Contact us for more information! //The Esgaia Team

Great news! Esgaia now offers custom engagement templates, which enable clients to define their own template(s), including topic or industry-specific ones. In this case study we demonstrate how to implement a net zero engagement framework in Esgaia, modeled against the Net Zero Investment Framework (NZIF). In order to drive the transition of underlying assets over time, investors should set specific alignment criteria, assess the current and forward-looking alignment of assets, and communicate their expectations together with suitable engagement objectives. To help guide investors, there are several different frameworks available to support their net-zero ambitions, including how to engage with issuers on climate change and transition plans. The Net Zero Investment Framework The criteria set forth in the NZIF can be modified to fit with other frameworks or be supplemented with sector-specific alignment criteria. For listed equity and corporate fixed income, as noted in IIGCC’s ‘Investor Expectations of Corporate Transition Plans: From A to Zero’, six criteria are used to assess the alignment of a transition plan. These criteria broadly cover: Ambition, emissions targets, performance, and disclosure (criteria 1, 2, 3 & 4 respectively), How emissions reductions are going to be delivered (criteria 5 & 6), and Four “additional criteria” to be incorporated in transition plans where feasible, covering policy engagement, governance, just transition, and accounting. Implementing a net-zero template A net-zero engagement framework should reflect a criteria-based engagement and voting strategy for nonaligned assets and issuers, with clear escalation strategies. Depending on the baseline position, investors should set time-bound (ideally annual) objectives and longer-term goals for companies, while adjusting for sector-specific alignment criteria as appropriate. The video further below outlines how to implement a net zero engagement template in Esgaia. It highlights the following: Template creation: Admin users are able to create multiple templates with voluntary and mandatory fields to be populated by other users. Objectives: The objectives reflect the criteria discussed above. For each objective, users can add additional information such as notes and files. If implementing a thematic template, you will see an aggregated progress overview for the applicable companies. Milestones & evidencing progress: To mark progress against the objectives, in this example, we have included a scale with different levels aligned with the NZIF. For more information and examples of milestones, see e.g. IIGCC’s ‘Net Zero Stewardship Toolkit’ and Exhibit B. Entity-level criteria alignment: NZIF outlines five maturity stages as: i) Not aligned, ii) Committed to aligning, iii) Aligning towards a NZ pathway, iv) Aligned to a NZ pathway, and v) Achieving net zero. Such entity-level data can be separately imported by clients to the software as a standalone dataset, or manually mapped for engaged companies by users. Reporting: As a core feature of Esgaia, all of your engagement and activity records can be exported, either on a company-level or aggregated, to support reporting and more extensive analytics. Video - implementing a net zero framework in Esgaia As a final note, just as net zero investor guidance evolves over time, so too will Esgaia’s supporting features. This engagement template feature is one such example that will help enhance data quality and reduce unnecessary admin around engagement records. Please contact us to discuss how our software can empower your stewardship efforts and net zero engagements!

Tuesday the 18th of April, Esgaia hosted a webinar with industry experts to discuss some of the challenges and best practices around engagement management. If you missed out on Esgaia’s webinar on investment stewardship and engagement management, you can access the recording here. We hope it provided some fresh perspectives across the eight propositions covering topics such as engagement resourcing, quality vs quantity, escalation, and data management. Paraphrasing from the webinar, engagement is not a panacea, if you're choosing engagement first as your approach, then you need to invest sufficient resources, have milestones and clear objectives, and deliver real results. And when engagement alone isn't the answer, you need a holistic approach encompassing a broader set of stewardship tools and a plan for how it all comes together. Speakers: Rickard Nilsson, Head of Stewardship Success at Esgaia (moderator), Chloe Horne, Stewardship Specialist at the UN PRI, Teni Ekundare, Director, Responsible Investments, Columbia Threadneedle Investments, and Nawar alsaadi, Founder & CEO at Kanata Advisors. Until next time!

This is an interview with Sara E. Murphy, Chief Strategy Officer at the non-profit organisation The Shareholder Commons. Q: Tell us a bit about your background and career, and how you came to focus on investment stewardship? I began my career working for NGOs in the international development and disaster response fields. In 2001, I transitioned into Sustainable and Responsible Investment (SRI) research for the Investor Responsibility Research Center (IRRC), where I specialized in bioengineering and defense contracting research. After leaving IRRC, I spent several years at The Cadmus Group, an environmental consultancy. In 2005, I moved to Frankfurt, Germany to work as a senior sustainability analyst for Fortis Investments’ SRI fund management team. (Fortis Investments was acquired by BNP Paribas Asset Management during my tenure.) I moved back to Washington, DC in 2011, where I launched my independent consultancy on sustainable investing and corporate responsibility. After almost a decade doing that, I was beginning to feel, frankly, quite anxious about how far away the investment landscape still was from anything resembling a sustainable course, despite the progress we’d been making in ESG integration. When I heard about The Shareholder Commons’ focus on systems rather than enterprises, I knew that was the essential next step, and I joined up in 2020. Q: As Chief Strategy Officer at the NGO The Shareholder Commons, what’s your work about and what are the objectives of TSC? TSC is a non-profit organization that addresses social and environmental issues from the perspective of shareholders who diversify their investments to optimize risk and return. TSC addresses the divergence that often emerges between a company’s interest in maximizing its cash flows over the long term and its shareholders’ interests in optimizing overall market returns. We believe that in a free-market system, investors must establish universally applicable minimum standards for portfolio companies, so as to preserve essential social and environmental systems that undergird diversified investment portfolios. TSC promotes system stewardship through four interrelated initiatives: public advocacy, engaging investors, policies, and litigation. My work focuses primarily on engaging and collaborating with investors to put system stewardship tools into practice. Q: In pursuit of TSC’s goals, how must current market structures change? And how can investors get involved? Investors can’t maximize their returns without addressing the social and environmental costs that portfolio companies externalize. We help institutional investors to preserve resources vital to long-term performance by encouraging companies to pursue business strategies that don’t impose social and environmental costs on the rest of their portfolios. For example, the economic loss a diversified portfolio incurs from unrestrained climate change is likely to far exceed any excess return an investor might receive from picking companies that outperform the market. By the same token, when companies overuse or misuse antibiotics, fail to pay their workers a living wage, evade taxes, and ignore human rights, they damage public health, destabilize society, threaten infrastructure, and risk the global order, all of which threaten diversified shareholders’ returns. Our system stewardship resources help investors to protect their portfolios from such systemic threats. They help investors to ensure that the companies prioritize their systemic impacts over individual company profit in order to protect portfolio values. This reprioritization may require companies to reject practices that damage the systems that support our global economy, even if such rejection could decrease the individual company’s relative return. Our system stewardship tools are specifically designed to address this potential divergence of interest between diversified investors and the companies they own. I encourage interested investors to contact me at sara@theshareholdercommons.com. Q: Some will disagree with this approach and argue that certain limitations make wide application unlikely such as perceived conflicts with corporate director duties, or activity replacement by other, less ethical, entities. What’s your response to such views? A recent report from the law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus, A Legal Framework for Impact, shows that investment professionals around the world have not just the prerogative but an obligation to prioritize systemic issues such as climate change, inequality, and biodiversity loss over the financial performance of individual companies when they provide the greater risk to portfolios. In short, it’s squarely in line with fiduciary duty to implement the system stewardship approach we propound. And yes, there is absolutely a conflict of interest between corporate directors—who are concentrated owners of their own companies—and their diversified shareholders—who rely on a resilient economy, supported by critical social and environmental systems, to maximize their diversified portfolios. That’s why we focus on institutional investors. Their obligation is to those shareholders, who are just trying not to run out of money before they die, and not to corporate boards. As to activity replacement, the large institutional investors that dominate the capital markets can reach many privately held companies through their status as limited partners in private equity, venture capital, and infrastructure funds. There are also opportunities to affect businesses through debt markets and guardrails that reach into supply chains. Finally, system stewardship tools applied to some entities creates an incentive for them to ensure that adequate regulation is put into place, to avoid losing in the race to the bottom. Q: One counterargument I can think of is how diversified ownership also reflects portfolio-maximizing strategies, e.g. by favoring risk-taking that increases the risk of individual business failures such as leveraged capital structures. Even so, many view general guardrails or merit-based approaches to corporate governance as often too prescriptive, so how do you marry the two? The biggest thing that matters to diversified shareholders is the value of the economy itself—and, by extension, the environmental and social systems that sustain it—and individual enterprise value comes in a distant second. Guardrails are designed to prevent companies from maximizing their enterprise value, and thereby the marginal increase in financial return they deliver to shareholders, by externalizing their costs that shareholders absorb to a much greater degree across the rest of their portfolios. It’s just a bad trade for everyday savers. We are capitalists. We’re saying that companies should compete on providing the best product or service, not on externalizing costs. Q: Systematic risks are often rooted in government shortfall, and still we call for policy action in many areas. Investors can play a catalytic role by meaningfully raising the salience of particular issues; any thoughts on balancing investee vs public policy engagement, and so forth? In an ideal world, government would fully perform the function of setting limits that prevented companies from seeking profit through cost externalization. But we don’t live in such a world. The conditions for excessive greenhouse gas emissions, antibiotics overuse, worker mistreatment, and disinformation proliferation (to name just a few systemic risks) have gone unchecked, and in some cases have been fostered by regulatory support for unsustainable business models. Considering the facts on the ground, guardrails are necessary to complement regulatory strategies for two reasons. First, they can act as stopgaps until regulatory solutions are reached. Second, they can reverse continuing industry opposition to meaningful regulation, which is one of the chief obstacles to government action by (1) prohibiting public influence campaigns aimed at interfering with needed regulation and (2) incentivizing support for regulation by companies subject to the guardrails. Q: Do you see any particular regional differences or trends in investor practices here? To a certain degree, we do, but there are no regional differences when it comes to fiduciary duty, and that duty is best served by system stewardship. Q: Time for final remarks, if you could ask for one thing of investors, what would it be? I’d ask them to recognize that just because we’ve become accustomed to doing things a certain way doesn’t mean it’s the best way. I’d ask them to find the courage to recognize that we cannot continue on this trajectory, and that it’s their fiduciary obligation to take care of the critical systems on which everyday savers depend for their basic prosperity. Thank you Sara and good luck with the important work at The Shareholder Commons! If you want to learn more about The Shareholder Commons, please visit its website at https://theshareholdercommons.com/ Interviewer: Rickard Nilsson, Head of Stewardship Success, Esgaia Interviewee: Sara E. Murphy, Chief Strategy Officer, The Shareholder Commons About Sara: Sara joined The Shareholder Commons in 2020 after 22 years working in sustainable investing and environmental and social advocacy. Sara began her career working for NGOs in the international development and disaster response fields. Sara holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Virginia in French and Spanish, and a Master of Arts degree from George Mason University in Economics. Sara grew up in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, which fundamentally shaped her understanding of the business world’s long reach and influence.

Standard office tools were not designed for stewardship. Stewardship is not a task or model. It’s a complex, evolving and often multiyear process. As organisations expand their stewardship efforts, they may need tools to better manage their engagement. This can help them save time on engagement tracking, monitoring and reporting – and give back more time for meaningful engagement itself. In this case study, we exemplify how Esgaia helps UK-based asset manager Findlay Park Partners manage its enhanced stewardship approach and support robust reporting against the UK Stewardship Code. Background Findlay Park has a long history of stewardship, but its efforts have intensified in recent years. For instance, as part of its Net Zero Asset Manager’s commitment, it engages with all companies in which it invests which have not yet committed to science-based climate targets. It was also among the first cohort of signatories to the new UK Stewardship Code. As a signatory to the code, investors should explain their stewardship strategy in practice, demonstrating how policies and processes translate into responsible investment stewardship. This includes communicating: How your stewardship strategy is implemented, governed, resourced, and incentivised What this looks like in practice in terms of e.g. investee monitoring, proxy voting, escalation, collaboration, and market influence What the outcomes have been, for instance whether corporates have responded to engagement asks As Findlay Park looked to further enhance its stewardship reporting against the code, it recognized the value of bespoke software to help its efforts. With Esgaia technology, it ensures best-in-class engagement data management and reporting capabilities. This helps the firm better communicate the activities and outcomes of its stewardship to clients and beneficiaries. Client Findlay Park is an independent investment partnership based in London. Its purpose is to generate compelling compound returns for its investors, measured over decades. With a 25-year track record, Findlay Park currently has over 10bn EUR in AuM. Challenge The Code is clear in that effective stewardship is dependent on individual circumstances. As such, it does not prescribe a one-size-fits-all approach but instead expects organisations to exercise responsible stewardship in a way that fits their size, type, business model and strategy. Resourcing is still a key aspect of the code, which requires of signatories to appropriately resource stewardship activities, including the investment in people, processes, research and systems. As we frequently point out, however, many investors tend to forget about the latter, at least in regard to engagement data management. The challenge with legacy approaches - excel being the incumbent - is that they tend to not do well with increased complexity: as practices evolve, it becomes increasingly difficult to ensure record and data quality, adequate coordination and task management. Solution By choosing Esgaia, Findlay Park has opted for a purpose-built solution. A software that helps investors improve engagement data management around activity and engagement recording, progress monitoring, and stakeholder reporting. More specifically, of relevance to the code, Findlay Park uses Esgaia to: Structure engagement records with clear objectives Track interactions and the outcomes of engagements Capture efforts in relevant industry initiatives Analyze and export data for reporting purposes, Monitor the alignment of its engagement with Principal Adverse Impacts and the UN Sustainable Development Goals Platform captions, demo account This case study supports our assertion that engagement tracking matters. In fact, it matters so much that without it, your engagement management and disclosures may suffer. Instead, using dedicated software, like Findlay Park, you can save time from inefficient administration to focus more on what really matters, tangible stewardship action! Find out more about Findlay Park’s stewardship strategy here. Rose Beale, Responsible Investment Lead, Findlay Park, comments: - “We found Esgaia as part of our efforts to help increase the impact of our engagement. The platform was built by practitioners who really understand how effective engagement works, and the barriers to it. This was real differentiator for us. Esgaia has eliminated a lot of the frustrations, and given us more time to focus on engagement itself. Especially with Stewardship Code deadlines approaching, and PRI close behind it, the time it saves on reporting is also a highlight!” If you want additional insights into how Esgaia can support you in meeting UK Stewardship Code requirements, please read this blog.

Q: Tell us a bit about your background and career, and the appeal of working with responsible investment. As an undergraduate, following an early interest in sociology, I studied environmental science and specialised in European environmental policy & regulation. My intent was, and remains, that of influencing systemic change for a more sustainable future: there is literally no planet B yet discovered in the cosmos and I have never been seduced by a speculative life on Mars. Coming from an entrepreneurial family, I always had some interest in finance and innovative thinking. However, being pragmatic, I firstly sought out project-level business transformations and worked in a number of roles under a sustainability umbrella –e.g. green building certifications, local government sustainability & community resilience, climate risk management and ESG data & analytics. It was my interest in research and the lure of influencing capital allocations that brought me to responsible investment. What appeals to me in this space is the opportunity to connect the big picture with real world impacts. I also love the intellectual appeal of continuous learning and stakeholder management coupled with the need to build capacity within and without an organisation. I admit that being good stewards of capital is easier said than done and it essentially requires a lot of creativity, dedication and personal resilience. Q: As Head of Ethics and Impact at U Ethical, you are responsible for the implementation and oversight of responsible investing (RI), including ESG integration and stewardship, sounds like busy days? Haha..let’s say my time under lockdown in COVID was very well spent. A few months after I started my role at U Ethical, the pandemic took hold in Australia. During that period, I had a laser focus on putting in place the processes and systems that could do justice to the organisation’s history and advocacy in social justice matters. This work, in addition to our investment performance, have been externally recognised by our industry peers in receiving the Money Magazine award for Best Australian ESG Shares Fund 2023 for U Ethical’s Australian Equities trust; which was a joyful moment. But you cannot sit on laurels: RI is about continuing to elevate your practice and aspiring to greater ambition. The to-do list that remains outstanding is best represented by a metaphor Doris Lessing depicted so well in The Golden Notebooks: we carry a boulder up a steep mountain, and each time you reach the top, the boulder falls back to the valley floor, but each time a few centimeters higher from where you started. In stewardship, I am afraid incrementalism can no longer be contemplated as ‘good enough”– we are now experiencing a polycrisis, a long chain of rupture made up of disparate interacting shocks. We cannot feel comfortable. As change makers, being comfortable means that we are not doing our job well. Q: Can you share a bit about the stewardship strategy and how it’s implemented? We have implemented a highly systematic ESG integration process for the investment team to review, evaluate and construct the investment portfolio. Our approach undergoes a periodic review and, at present, we are evolving our fixed income strategy. Our overarching RI approach guides and informs the ethical and ESG factors for active stewardship discussions and collaborative initiatives. We are part of a number of investor groups where we primarily act as supporting investors by leveraging our technical and research capabilities. At times, we consider leading an engagement when the topic demands it. In addition to that, we closely collaborate with many civil society organisations and experts who help us on policy submissions and topical ESG campaigns. Q: Word has it U Ethical make use of an engagement checklist of key ethical considerations - mind sharing some details? E.g. what was it modelled against? And how is it used by personnel? Great to know you paid attention…:). The engagement checklist is virtually a guideline: an internal living document for the broader investment team to consider ESG topics in discussions with portfolio companies. It is unrealistic to expect portfolio managers and investment analysts to be ESG “experts” and we designed it with that in mind. We tailored it on our existing ESG rating’s financial materiality model to ensure the team can cover, by sector, the most relevant ESG matters. To these, we also included additional questions from, for example, more recent modern slavery investor guidance reports and recommendations from our own Ethical Advisory Panel, which includes external stakeholders and industry experts. It is not a box ticking document but a reference to enable the team if/when required. In practice, as an investment team, we regularly discuss and flag key ESG questions we want to address in company calls or meetings and then the EESG (ethics & ESG) specialists go into greater depth and follow ups. Each EESG discussion requires a good amount of preparatory research, benchmarking, and critical thinking. Q: Accounting for your size as an investor, how do you balance direct engagements with portfolio companies, collaborative engagements with industry peers, and advocacy initiatives? Our RI approach helps us being agile in reviewing and prioritising ethical and ESG matters. Unfortunately, juggling investment research (including internal thematic research), proxy voting priorities and active stewardship, both direct and collaborative, translates into a zero-sum-game: i.e. a focus on one activity detracts from others, which means intent and outcomes need to be clear at the onset. For example, policy advocacy – i.e. reviewing policy consultations - is a demanding and time-consuming task but we consider it worthy as it addresses systems-wide changes (aka systematic stewardship) that would, in time, open up opportunities for both our portfolio companies and prospective investments. Q: Is there anything about the Australian way of investment stewardship you’d like others to learn from? On an asset size basis, the Australian institutional investment market is the fifth largest globally(1). With this scale comes great responsibility and certainly influence. This means that collaborative initiatives between asset owners and fund managers can and do have leverage. The local market characteristics, small and relatively concentrated, has engendered established and open discussions between shareholders and corporate executive teams. The international exposure of many investors has also accelerated healthy discussions about investment governance and international best practice. This led, in 2018, to the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors (ACSI) launching the Australian Asset Owner Stewardship Code and the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX)’s corporate governance principles introducing ESG and climate risk considerations in its fourth edition in 2019 (compare these to the first stewardship code introduced in the United Kingdom in 2010!). Commendably, during a period of lagging and stagnating policy development, Australian market participants demonstrated the ability to influence and shift the narrative by setting up a new advocacy body such as the Australian Sustainable Finance Institute (ASFI)(2). More recently, a collaboration between ACSI, IGCC(3) and RIAA (our own version of the US/UK/Nordic-SIFs)(4) is an excellent proof of skillful collaboration: “Legal advice regarding potential liability of directors under the ISSB draft standards for forward looking statements”(5). Having said that, Australian boards lag OECD peers on gender and racial diversity, which in turn affects leadership capabilities and is likely to slowdown the responsiveness of both investors and corporates to mounting macro- and micro- economic, social and environmental challenges. Q: There’s a lot of talk at the moment about how engagement and active ownership needs to become more effective to drive sustainability outcomes. What are your thoughts on this? I completely agree. Effective stewardship, particularly for long-term investors, needs to be clear, specific, time-based and certainly more forceful when controversial stocks are concerned. In sight of the climate transition, we also need to ramp up more effective stewardship in relation to debt-financed-ESG. In my view, there is nothing more impactful than Green Social and Sustainability (GSS)-oriented debt covenants. Q: An important piece of the puzzle has to do with people, ensuring there’s adequate expertise and experience involved in monitoring and engagement practices. What are some important considerations for investors here? Numerous organisations, unfortunately, tend to hire for “cultural alignment” over “skill requirements”. You might have candidate strengths matrices but when push comes to shove, on what basis is candidate A preferred over candidate B? Besides, the lower the perception of a field being “technical”, the higher the chance of inadequate hiring, which then puts organisations at risk of financially underperforming, and in RI in particular, at risk of greenwashing. I understand it is easier to promote internally, someone who is familiar with the organisation and its mandate. Also, it often seems sufficient to sponsor an employee on a short-term course but does that turn the person into a field expert? This is why I use the term expert cautiously and I am closely following the debate on “competence greenwashing, thanks to Associate Professor Kim Shumacher from Kyushu University and Gordon Noble, Alison Atherton and Kriti Nagrath at the University of Technology in Sydney(6). This is why I play an active role as an industry mentor for RMTI Online and for UTS Business School (finance department) as an honorary associate. Q: Time for final remarks, if you could ask for one thing of investors, what would it be? It is simple, yet its implications are profound: invest with purpose and do that as if the world depends on it. Thanks for your great contributions and insights Désirée! Interviewer: Rickard Nilsson, Head of Stewardship Success, Esgaia Interviewee: Désirée Lucchese, Head of Ethics and Impact, U Ethical Investors About Désirée: Responsible Investment professional with expertise in environmental systems, climate risk and the integration of ESG data into investment strategies and decision-making. At U Ethical, Désirée leads the evolution of the ethical investment framework and U Ethical's active stewardship with portfolio companies, in collaboration with U Ethical’s investment team, key stakeholders and industry peers. Since 1985, U Ethical have developed a reputation for unwavering commitment to ethics-driven performance, contributing the majority of operating surplus to social justice advocacy and community programs. Désirée is an responsible investment and financial services mentor who is passionate about understanding systems dynamics and the drivers for change, whether social or organisational. She believes that we all have a role to play in achieving a stable and thriving society. She is an avid reader who is both equally loves ecological economics and figurative arts. References: 1) Following the US, UK, Japan, and Canada (Willis Tower Watson, 2022) 2) ASFI initially involved a very broad set of investors, capital allocators and civil society organisations 3) Investor Group on Climate Change 4) Responsible Investment Association of Australasia 5) https://igcc.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Advice-on-ISSB-Draft-Standards-Final.pdf 6) https://www.uts.edu.au/isf/explore-research/projects/advancing-climate-skills-australian-financial-system

In this blog post, we outline five areas with supporting evidence for investors to prioritise in their stewardship going forward. A reluctance to address these areas risk leading to a less than optimal strategy, both in terms of resources and impact, so stop multi-tasking and focus! Viewing stewardship as a cost-center instead of a profit center Thoughtful stewardship can add value for clients, as discussed in this academic paper which analyses the efforts of a large active asset manager involving thousands of high-level private meetings with issuers globally. The authors show how the firm’s stewardship activities created an information advantage impacting trading decisions resulting in additional alpha. This firm had a very solid process with well-defined coordination between portfolio managers, analysts, and the governance team. While the results are of course not applicable to all asset managers, there are certain markers we can look for, such as: the expertise and experience of the team, knowledge and data sharing structures, and evidence of investment decisions based on engagement and voting outcomes. Mixing engaging for information vs change Engaging for information vs change, monitoring vs engagement, fact-finding vs goal-oriented; whatever terminology resonates, investors should separate the two in their engagement reporting. As noted by the UK Financial Reporting Council, in reference to the UK stewardship code, applicants should distinguish between interactions seeking information and activities with clear objectives. And while there is a role for both, demonstrating effective engagement should reflect the latter approach. As discussed in this article for ESG Investor, this imposes the difficult task on investors to tier interactions based on intent and the level of effort to stay compliant with these emerging disclosure regimes. Many investors need therefore to evolve their approach in this regard, even if you view your investee monitoring and asset stewardship as one. Making it a numbers game As we’ve highlighted before, engagement is first a foremost a qualitative undertaking, requiring significant judgement and activity over a period of time. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, aligned with comments by UK-based investment management advisory Redington in its recent UK Stewardship code analysis, delivering effective change is what matters, not just quantity of activity. While many of us are guilty of adding fuel to this fire, it’s time we all start to focus on what matters. As such, it’s positive to see how PRI in their new reporting framework ask investors to explain and exemplify their stewardship strategy in practice, including but not limited to investees and the broader market, collaboration, proxy voting, and escalation. Failing to engage in systematic stewardship Often commingled with systemic, or system-level stewardship, systematic stewardship offers an approach that serves both investor welfare and social welfare. It rests on the foundation of the universal owner narrative, whereby diversified investors would be better off focusing on reducing systematic - market-wide - risk as a way to improve risk-adjusted portfolio returns. Interest in the approach continues to rise, with recent academic research and the Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance's Future of Engagement report and target-setting protocol. It's about articulating merit-based expectations and following through on those using public discourse, proxy voting, and engagement. And focusing on appropriate levers for influence, which would see an increased focus on engaging standard setters and regulators to strengthen the rules of the game, and using collaborative settings to address together sector/value chain issues. Forgetting about data management Two common approaches to investors’ record-keeping are to either view engagements as sequences of activities towards specific objectives, or as individual interactions over a specific period. While the former approach suggests there are thoughtful engagement strategies in place, the latter doesn’t necessarily mean efforts are performed in a vacuum. Most often, it simply reflects different disclosure expectations. Importantly, investors need to think about data management and ensure they have dedicated systems for record-keeping, performance monitoring, and coordination. Capabilities that support qualitative stewardship utilising the full engagement toolbox (including engagement, proxy voting, and public discourse). Without this your engagement disclosures will suffer, and so will your credibility to carry forward effective engagement. //The Esgaia team

On the 15th of February, Esgaia held a roundtable discussion on engagement collaboration with institutional investors in Stockholm. With both asset managers and asset owners represented, the discussion centered around topics such as engaging with actors across the ecosystem, general challenges, and the role of technology. Below follows a summary and insights from the discussion: Work smarter, not harder: Time is a scarce commodity, making resource allocation all the more important. This includes, but is not limited to your engagement priorities, points of intervention, and contribution to various collaborations and initiatives. A focus on company performance vs market performance came to the fore, with argumentation for each in terms of value at risk and universal ownership. Importantly, it’s about finding a balance, and not letting the quest for alpha negatively impact beta. Great collaboration is contingent on good coordination: Inadequate coordination, as regards e.g. tasks and responsibilities, risk leading to reduced momentum and commitment. The participants mentioned a couple of examples at the respective ends of this spectrum, which really demonstrated the value of coordination and how important it is for the continued progress and success of different initiatives. Increasing transparency will decrease duplication: Participants agreed on the inefficiency of many investors engaging the same companies on the same issues, but noted how it’s a tricky issue as it's a natural part of asset management research and monitoring. From the corporate perspective, it partly functions as a filter to better understand investor sentiment and trends, while on the other hand, it can reach a point where it simply becomes unreasonable and inefficient for companies to manage. Increased transparency of investors’ engagement dialogues and better structures for collaboration should see improved and streamlined communications, in turn leading to more effective stewardship. The challenge is not so much the transparency piece as finding suitable ways to coordinate. Competition is not a drawback: Realising the benefits from engagement will often require that the market can access and value such information. Competition-wise, the sharing of information wasn’t really perceived as a big problem. Firstly, companies are not permitted to share material non-public information, and secondly, investors will treat and interpret information differently, for example in how it might influence investment decision-making or not. Here it makes sense to also comment on the free-rider problem. Though perceived as a key challenge to address collective systemic issues (as discussed by e.g. PRI in their Active Ownership 2.0 framework), it was not viewed as much of an issue by the participants. One reflected on how it might be a cultural aspect rooted in the long heritage of responsible investing in the Nordics, and thereof the importance of stewardship to most. Regardless, collaboration will only help to address free-riding through dividing resources and cost. Technology can act as an enabler: We came back to technology throughout the discussion. Sure, it had to do with Esgaia being the host of the roundtable, but also because many perceive it as a particularly suitable vehicle to help in coordination and information sharing, and to increase transparency. For example, today it’s hard to know who’s engaging who, and if there are overlaps between the different collaborative initiatives, something technology could help address in the future. For more information on the growing importance of investor collaboration, please read this blog, with insights based on the theory of social network analysis. //The Esgaia team

Effective stewardship reporting is important for stakeholders to understand how you as an investor interact and influence your investees and broader sphere of influence. In this blog, we outline six areas for improved reporting and demonstration of investor stewardship. 1. Ensure your engagement tracking is up-to-date Many investors struggle to systematically record and capture engagement data, which is hurting their reporting and transparency efforts. Therefore, better systems are needed to adequately capture and report both basic statistics and more detailed insights. You will probably sense if your system is adequate or not. Just as in any other area of your business, modernising engagement management can help optimise and effectivise the workflow; in this instance, especially from a data management and reporting perspective. 2. Don’t forget your broader sphere of influence Quality stewardship is not just about the oversight of existing assets, but also how you use your role and position to influence stakeholders and the broader market. Here are three examples of how this is shaping investor practices: The UK Stewardship Code states that investors should explain how they have worked with other stakeholders to promote the continued improvement of the functioning of financial markets, for which reporting should explain their organisation’s role, contribution, and an assessment of their effectiveness. GFANZ recommends that investors disclose a summary of their engagement activities with governments and the public sector, including topics and audiences, The Investment Consultants Sustainability Working Group (ICSWG) suggests in their engagement reporting guide that asset managers should report the approximate number of different entities they have engaged with. Via Esgaia, one way to capture this is by labeling groups of stakeholders together and then link activities (and engagements) as applicable. Here are some ideas of relevant groups, aside from companies and assets: Clients/beneficiaries, Industry stakeholders, Civil society (e.g. NGOs, Academia, Trade associations), Public sector (e.g. policy consultations, governments) 3. Separate engagement for information vs change To ensure quality and honesty in stewardship efforts, investors should try to separate what constitutes more general information-gathering and monitoring vs engagements with articulated goals and objectives. This should then be accounted for in investors' disclosures. Via Esgaia, you can easily enforce such tracking either through implementing a review process on created engagements and activities, and or by highlighting a tiered structure to users (using custom fields) such that e.g. general monitoring is linked on the company level, and not to specific engagements. // Here's a short video of how Esgaia can help streamline your reporting: 4. Use engagement sequences in data capture The engagement toolbox consists of a wide range of activities, all differently placed on the resource intensity spectrum. To enable good oversight and detailed case narratives, while capturing new issues as they emerge, you should preferably view engagements as sequences of interactions dealing with the same issue, rather than as standalone interactions. Via Esgaia, you have the flexibility to decide for yourself, but the system is built to cater to the aforementioned approach. By using a tiered structure of Company/entity > Engagements > Activities, you would benefit from the clarity of separate engagement profiles with linked activities. For more information, read our dedicated blog on the subject: Aligning Your Process According to Engagement Sequences 5. Case studies should reflect your best engagement stories Engagement case studies are required in most disclosure regimes, for example in the UK Stewardship code. It offers an excellent way to bring your processes and statistics to life, helping exemplify your approach, performed activities, and resulting outcomes. Assuming case studies reflect your best efforts, they should be well-crafted, addressing e.g. the objectives, rationale, and methods of the engagement. Here’s a template you might find useful: Snapshot: Entity name (if public, preferably corroborate with counterparty for accuracy) Issue topic Engagement period Engagement status (ongoing vs concluded) SDG contribution Narrative: Background Objective(s) Activities Achievement(s) Outcomes & value creation Next steps (if applicable) 6. And lastly, focus on quality not quantity Investment stewardship is not a numbers game, it never was. Qualitative engagement is what matters, which requires significant judgement and activity, often over long time periods. This goes for your reporting as well, disclosures should reflect honest and realistic claims of efforts and activity levels. And if you get evaluated or incentivised to increase quantity at the risk of hurting quality, then push back. If you want more guidance in this area, take a look at these blogs: 7 Ways Investors Use Esgaia's Software to Meet UK Stewardship Code Requirements Engagement Process 101: Reporting & Disclosures And of course the UK FRC’s review of effective stewardship reporting; part 5 in the report includes a guide with additional coverage of engagement prioritisation, escalation, engagement outcomes, and collaboration. //The Esgaia team

In this blog, we outline Esgaia’s priorities for the new year and provide our take on where investment stewardship is set to go next. The outlook is based on client insights and extensive market research over the past year. We hope it will come in handy as you strategise around your priorities going forward. Before we set sight on the future, let’s highlight some achievements in 2022: In fall, we celebrated two years since the launch of the software, As our journey continues, we will continue to help investors to become more responsible stewards of assets. And while progress has been made on many fronts, there is still plenty of room for innovation. Software priorities for 2023 Our IT resources are split between software maintenance, enhancements and innovation. Starting with the former, our in-house tech-team works to ensure maximum up-time and that bugs are addressed with minimum delay. As it regards enhancements, aside from the continuous backend improvements, users can expect updates to at least the following features: Website disclosure embeds Outlook plugin Voting module Collaboration features Innovation-wise, we will look to progress in partly the following areas: ESG data & engagement prioritisation Product customisation Disclosures & reporting User intelligence Investment Stewardship Outlook Throughout 2022 we have highlighted several studies and surveys on active ownership and engagement. While these tell different perspectives of investor practices, it is evident how better governance and resourcing, and more collaboration is leading to improved quality and legitimacy in efforts. We expect a year of continued strong growth for the strategy and its underlying elements. - Here are five trends to keep an eye on in 2023: Increased spend on human capital and technology To ensure commitments and resources line up, investors are prioritising investments in people, processes, and systems. While stewardship experts are experiencing a gold rush (high in demand and with strengthened power in their organisations), IT consultants and software providers are keeping busy meeting the needs for improved sourcing, management and reporting of data. Redefined spheres of influence Acknowledging that resources differ, investors are that recognising responsible stewardship is about quality, not quantity. It is about optimising how you exercise your influence with investees, clients/suppliers, industry, civil society and policymakers. And not making it a numbers game, or ticking a box to satisfy stakeholders. For example, asset owners are increasingly setting out their expectations in relation to stewardship directly in the mandate terms. Better coordination & more collaboration Just like the mindset shift of sustainability in business over the last decade or so, investors understand the importance of having an integrated process with clear mandates and accountability across ESG and investment teams. For example, emerging best practices expand on the roles of PMs and analysts to also encompass asset stewardship, - with specialist support from Stewardship teams - able to explain not only fund construction and investment decisions, but also the rationale of their ESG considerations and active ownership efforts. On the collaboration front, which is seen as a key lever of influence, the increase in depth and volume of shareholder interest is leading both investors and corporates to want more streamlined engagements. Positively, investors are increasing their participation and role in different collaborative settings, which helps to spread resources and costs, increased power, and scope to encompass broader value chain engagements. Enhanced reporting and transparency The market is expecting better, more detailed disclosures from investors that accurately explain the organisational approach and the scale of activities undertaken. It is about engaging for influence not just information, for which effective reporting will separate such tracking, and make use of both qualitative and quantitative information with case studies. Transparency-wise, we are seeing more investors publicising engaged companies, providing vote rationales, and being more vocal around (lack of) progress through benchmarks, public statements, and so forth. More power to the universal owner With a lack of progress on the policy front, investors are taking matters into their own hands by expanding their understanding and obligation of fiduciary duty. With three-quarters of institutional investors now believing ESG is a part of this duty, we might be able to start closing the sustainability and long-term value disconnect. That is, with 75-90 % of portfolio performance due to overall market performance, we are seeing positive signs of investors willing to forsake the returns of individual holdings if it's for the benefit and sustainability of the commons. Good luck with the year ahead! If you need a sounding board to discuss all things engagement related, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Onwards and upwards! //The Esgaia Team