Glass Lewis Publishes Inaugural Global Investment Stewardship Survey

Findings Reveal Stewardship Practices Are Strategically Mature but Operationally Constrained, with Investors Focusing on Integration and Accountability

San Francisco, Limerick, Toronto: March 26, 2026 - Glass Lewis, one of the world's leading providers of corporate governance intelligence to institutional investors and companies, has published its first-ever Global Investment Stewardship Survey. The report includes insights from about 60 asset managers and asset owners across Europe (49 percent), North America (44 percent), and Asia-Pacific (7 percent). The firm conducted the survey to better understand how investors structure, resource, and execute stewardship in an increasingly complex operating environment.

Investment stewardship is evolving as greater team coordination, diverging regional priorities, and growing expectations for measurable outcomes reshape the landscape. Glass Lewis' survey provides a lens into the strategies, priorities, and practical challenges facing investors today. The findings highlight how stewardship has become an established and increasingly sophisticated discipline, with investors focusing on strengthening integration, prioritization, and accountability across their stewardship activities. Key takeaways from the survey include:

• Diverging Stewardship Priorities Across Regions: Investors globally prioritize climate change and board effectiveness, but regional nuances are evident. European investors place greater emphasis on sustainability-related themes such as biodiversity and human rights, whereas North American investors focus more on traditional governance issues including executive compensation and shareholder rights.
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• ‍Hybrid Stewardship Models Are Now the Norm: Nearly 65 percent of respondents employ a hybrid stewardship approach that combines baseline expectations across portfolios with deeper engagement on select holdings. This blended model increases the need for effective prioritization, tracking, and reporting.
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• ‍Integration Remains a Work in Progress: While 88 percent of respondents report that voting and engagement are at least somewhat integrated, over three-quarters (76 percent) view it as a priority to streamline. With nearly half (49 percent) still relying on spreadsheets and general-purpose tools to track engagement activity, findings suggest that workflows remain siloed across a significant share of organizations.
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• ‍Data and Accountability Are Critical Enablers: 44 percent of respondents identified improving feedback loops with investment teams as a priority, while 36 percent cited enhanced data management as key to improving stewardship quality. Asset owners also reported growing demand for oversight of external managers, with data collection, normalization, and cross-manager comparability as primary operational challenges.

"Our survey highlights how investors are evolving their stewardship practices amid rising expectations and operational complexity," said Rickard Nilsson, Director of Stewardship at Glass Lewis. "Rather than stepping back, investors are focusing on integrating stewardship more closely with investment decision-making and improving how it is implemented. Ultimately, the quality of stewardship depends not just on ambition, but on how effectively it is executed."

To access the survey report, please visit here.

About Glass Lewis

Founded in 2003, Glass Lewis is a leading global provider of independent, intelligence-focused corporate governance, stewardship, and proxy voting solutions. The firm serves more than 1,300 investment managers and pension funds globally, who use its high-quality corporate governance research and proxy voting software to carry out their fiduciary duties. Glass Lewis also helps companies understand and implement corporate governance best practices and how investors view them. Headquartered in San Francisco, Glass Lewis has offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, Asia, and Australia. For more information, please visit www.glasslewis.com.

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