Watch Rhona Cormack, Insight’s Senior Stewardship Analyst, offer an outline of Insight’s engagement approach and activity over the last year.
Engagement activity in 2023
In 2023, we completed over 140 dedicated ESG engagements, while the majority of the 991 broader engagements conducted by our research analysts with debt issuers also included some form of ESG dialogue.
149
dedicated ESG engagements1
991
total engagements with issuers1
61
countries including 23 emerging markets
48%
of our meetings included executive-level management
Our focus on stewardship
Tackling greenwashing: Insight's impact bond ratings
In 2023, Insight rated 370 unique impact bonds capturing 173 issuers – with c.26% rated red, meaning they were excluded from our Responsible Horizons strategies.
What's new?
Our 2023 Stewardship Report outlines a range of new developments and initiatives, including those outlined below.
Engaging on systemic issues
Engaging on systemic issues
Insight continued to engage extensively to support well-functioning markets, prioritising issues where we offer leading technical expertise and we have identified potentially significant implications for clients and the wider market. This included significant discussions in the UK on the future for defined benefit pension schemes, and engaging on matters of climate change policy.
Escalation to support engagements
Escalation to support engagements
We implemented a new five stage process for engagement escalation in 2023. Where progress against an engagement objective on a financially material topic lags our expectations, we may move it into our enhanced monitoring process.
New impact strategies
New impact strategies
Insight’s Responsible Horizons range has been expanded to seven strategies, with the report detailing the launch of new impact-focused strategies classified as Article 9 under the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR).