2024 Stewardship and Responsible Investment report and Net Zero Stewardship supplement

Many investors and companies are under pressure regarding their Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) choices with a marked increase in politicisation and polarisation on whether these are truly embedded in ways of thinking and what value these add.

To support customers in making clearer choices, we continuously evolve and improve our approach year-on-year.

Stewardship and Responsible Investment Report 2024

This report provides an overview of how we aim to promote best practice on various ESG issues, try to improve company behaviours and meet client expectations.

In 2024 we engaged with 464 companies and pursued 185 engagements for change. This is up from our engagement with 443 companies and 169 voting engagement letters sent in 2023.

Highlights from the report this year

• Ethical AI: Launched a new program to tackle Artificial Intelligence (AI's) ethical and sustainability challenges.
• Just adaptation: Shifted focus to just adaptation, urging companies to minimise harm in their climate resilience plans.
• Property: Made our first natural capital investment in prime UK farmland, allowing us to protect its biodiversity for future generations.
• UK remuneration: Voted on 884 UK executive pay proposals, supporting those that are clear, fair, and competitive.
• Secured lending:  Invested in residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) and commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) within our sustainable funds, providing societal benefits.

Net Zero Stewardship Programme Climate Transition Assessment 2024  

This year we incorporated findings from our 2024 Net Zero Stewardship Programme’s Climate Transition Assessment (CTA) into our Stewardship and Responsible Investment Report.

As part of our climate and net zero strategy, our goal is to engage with issuers representing 70% of our financed emissions by 2030. For the highest emitting companies across our assets under management, we evaluate whether they have net zero strategies and, for those that do, how they are progressing with their 2030 (or beyond) decarbonisation plans.

In 2024, we identified

• 40 companies for engagement as part of our Net Zero Stewardship Programme, representing 54% of our financed emissions.
• 28 were part of our assessment and engagement in 2023, and we used them as a control group to evaluate progress.

When assessing companies against our Climate Transition Assessment (CTA), we evaluate each company using 12 indicators which you can explore in our reports.

Learn more about the challenges, actions and progress in our 2025 Stewardship and Responsible Investment Report, Net Zero Stewardship Programme and findings from our Climate Transition Assessment.

Read our Stewardship and responsible investment report

Learn more about our Net Zero Stewardship Programme

See the Climate Transition Assessment of 40 companies

Our stewardship and responsible investment activities aim to be pragmatic, reflecting local best practice and evolving market insights, and focus on the long-term interests of our clients. The actions we take may not always apply to specific Royal London Asset Management funds or strategies as they each have a different investment objective and make investment decisions according to this. Please check the prospectus for details on specific fund-level objectives.

For professional investors only. This material is not suitable for a retail audience. Capital at risk. This is a financial promotion and is not investment advice. Past performance is not a guide to future performance. The value of investments and any income from them may go down as well as up and is not guaranteed. Investors may not get back the amount invested. Portfolio characteristics and holdings are subject to change without notice. The views expressed are those of the author at the date of publication unless otherwise indicated, which are subject to change, and is not investment advice.