rezonanz Awarded Innosuisse Support to Develop Innovative Stewardship Benchmarking Framework

We are excited to announce that rezonanz has been awarded a grant from the Swiss Innovation Agency Innosuisse. This Innocheque will support our collaboration with Dr. Dominik Boos from the ZHAW School of Management and Law’s Center for Asset Management to develop a cutting-edge stewardship benchmarking framework that combines quantitative data analysis and empirical best practices.

Our project, which builds on the success of our Voting for Sustainability assessment of proxy voting records, aims to expand this framework to include engagement activities. This expansion will create a first-of-its-kind solution that helps both asset managers and institutional asset owners—such as pension funds—assess and improve their stewardship efforts in a measurable and comparable way.

Innovating Corporate Stewardship

Corporate stewardship is gaining momentum in the world of responsible investing. However, there is still a lack of standardized data to measure and compare institutional investors' stewardship activities, which include both proxy voting and direct engagement with company management. Measurement often defaults to “percentage of portfolio under engagement” which is at best insufficient and at worst, counterproductive.

At rezonanz, we aim to close this gap by developing an innovative solution to quantify stewardship through a comprehensive, objective, and systematic approach. By complementing our proxy voting analyses with engagement indicators, we will help institutional investors benchmark their stewardship practices, ultimately enabling them to make better-informed decisions and foster sustainable business practices.

A Collaborative Research Effort

Our partnership with Dr. Dominik Boos, Lecturer for Sustainable Investing and Asset Management at the ZHAW School of Management and Law, will be key to the success of this project. Dr. Boos brings a wealth of experience from his roles in both academia and industry, including positions at State Street Global Advisors, the Swiss National Bank, and Zürcher Kantonalbank. His expertise in sustainable finance and quantitative research will help us address several crucial questions:

• What are the empirically-backed best practices in stewardship, and how can they be organized in a meaningful sequence of steps for both asset managers and asset owners?
• What indicators can be used to assess alignment with these best practices, and how can they be standardized for comparison?
• How do these best practices differ between different types of institutional investors, and what factors influence these differences?

With Dr. Boos' guidance, we will ensure that our framework is both academically rigorous and market-relevant, providing investors with practical tools to enhance their stewardship activities.

Breaking New Ground in Stewardship Benchmarking

While rezonanz has already pioneered a methodology for proxy voting analysis, this project will expand our offering to include engagement activities—a critical pillar of stewardship. Dr. Boos' recent research into the stewardship practices of major asset managers and into the sustainability practices of Swiss 3a retirement funds forms the foundation for our new engagement assessment methodology, which will be vetted with practitioners and experts before being integrated into our broader framework.

By doing so, we are creating an innovative tool covering both proxy voting and engagement that allows investors to benchmark their stewardship practices in a new way. No other provider offers this level of detail and transparency across both stewardship pillars. This research lays the foundation for rezonanz to continue leading in stewardship benchmarking, providing institutional investors with the tools they need to foster transparency, collaboration, and measurable change.

Stay tuned for more updates as we work with Dr. Dominik Boos and the team at ZHAW to bring this innovative framework to life!

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