How asset managers can unlock ROI and competitive advantage with purpose-built stewardship platforms

Despite the political headwinds surrounding ESG in 2025, asset owners have made one thing unmistakably clear: their expectations on stewardship remain as high as ever. They continue to demand robust engagement, evidence of measurable outcomes, and seamless integration with investment processes.

For asset managers, that raises a practical question - how best to deliver stewardship excellence efficiently and credibly: build internal systems, adapt existing tools, or invest in a purpose-built platform?

1. Buy vs build: The hidden costs of going it alone

The seductive appeal of “we’ll build it ourselves”

It’s tempting. You know your workflows. You have IT resources. How hard could it be to create an internal engagement tracker?

The reality is that internal builds often struggle to deliver - or end up costing far more than expected.

What asset managers underestimate

• Development time: A functional stewardship platform requires 12–18 months of dedicated development. That’s not “a few weeks of IT time” - it’s multiple full-time engineers, project managers, plus extensive stewardship and investment team input.

• Ongoing maintenance costs: Software requires constant updates. Regulatory changes demand rapid adaptation. Bug fixes, security patches, user support - these costs never stop.

• Opportunity cost: Every hour your stewardship experts spend defining software requirements is an hour not spent engaging companies or serving clients.

• Feature gaps: Internal builds might start strong but rarely include advanced analytics, reporting automation, or deep integration capabilities from the outset. Over time, these limitations can make the tool harder to maintain or extend as needs evolve.

  
  

The “we’ll just use our CRM” trap

Some firms attempt to customise Salesforce or similar CRMs for stewardship tracking. The logic seems sound: “We already have it — let’s just configure it.”

The reality is consistently disappointing:

• Customisation costs spiral: What starts as “a few configuration changes” becomes £50,000–150,000 in consulting fees, plus ongoing maintenance costs that rival purpose-built platforms.

• Clunky user experience: CRMs are designed for sales pipelines, not engagement workflows. Users universally report that adapted CRMs feel awkward and unintuitive for stewardship work.

• Team morale killer: Stewardship professionals don’t want to fight with systems designed for different purposes. Multiple users have told us: “Using our customised CRM for engagements made me dread documentation - it was that frustrating.”

• Limited stewardship functionality: CRMs can’t elegantly handle engagement milestones, outcome tracking, proxy voting integration, or regulatory reporting formats. You end up with a glorified contact database.

• Reduced engagement quality: When systems are painful to use, documentation suffers. Teams take shortcuts, enter minimal information, and avoid the platform whenever possible.

  
  

The “Bloomberg/FactSet add-on” illusion

Another common approach: “Our fund managers use Bloomberg terminals and FactSet - let’s just use their basic engagement trackers.”

This seems efficient until you encounter the limitations:

• Eye-watering per-seat costs: Bloomberg terminals can cost £20,000–24,000 per user annually. FactSet is similarly expensive. Equipping your entire stewardship team (not just portfolio managers) becomes prohibitively costly.

• Wrong tool for the job: These platforms excel at market data and investment research - not stewardship workflow management. Their engagement modules are basic add-ons, not core capabilities.

• Siloed access: Only terminal users can see engagement data. Your broader team (junior analysts, reporting specialists, compliance officers) can’t access information without expensive licences.

• Poor stewardship UX: Interfaces designed for traders and fund managers don’t suit stewardship practitioners’ needs. Workflows feel bolted on - because they are.

• Limited reporting flexibility: Generate a customised client stewardship report? Not happening. Export data for Stewardship Code reporting? Painful at best.

• Doesn’t connect stewardship workflows: Tracking an engagement through research → multiple meetings → outcome assessment → voting decision → client reporting requires purpose-built workflow tools, not market data terminals.

  
  

One Head of Stewardship summarised it perfectly:“We tried using our Bloomberg engagement tracker. It worked fine for recording that a meeting happened. But actually managing strategic engagements, tracking outcomes, and producing reports? We were back to spreadsheets within months.”

The spreadsheet trap is worse

Many teams default to Excel or Google Sheets. This feels like the “free” option until you calculate:

• 8–12 hours per week per analyst on manual data entry and spreadsheet maintenance

• Fragmented information across multiple files owned by different team members

• Version control nightmares and data integrity risks

• Impossible to generate client-ready reports without extensive reformatting

• User experince leaves a lot to be desired

  
  

The platform advantage

Purpose-built platforms like Impactive deliver:

• Immediate deployment (weeks, not years)

• Continuous innovation from providers who live and breathe stewardship

• Built-in best practice from hundreds of hours of practitioner expertise

• Professional support and training

• Predictable costs without hidden maintenance burdens

By using the Impactive stewardship platform, we estimate it pays itself back in 4 months purely through time savings - before considering improvements in quality, compliance, or client satisfaction.

2. Winning and retaining AUM: Stewardship as a competitive differentiator

The client conversation has fundamentally changed

Five years ago, asset owners asked: “Do you have a stewardship policy?” Today they ask: “Show me evidence of measurable engagement outcomes. How do you integrate stewardship into investment decisions? Can you demonstrate your stewardship effectiveness?”

Asset owners are no longer accepting vague narratives. They want data, evidence, and proof.

How platforms drive AUM growth

Professionalise client reporting

Platform-generated reports transform client conversations. Instead of manually compiled Word documents with selective examples, you provide:

• Real-time dashboards showing engagement activity across their portfolio

• Outcome metrics demonstrating clear outcomes

• Clear links between engagement objectives and investment thesis

• Voting records with detailed rationale

• Quarterly updates generated in minutes, not days

This level of sophistication signals investment excellence. Asset owners notice.

Respond to RFPs with confidence

Requests for Proposals increasingly include detailed stewardship questions:

• “Describe your engagement tracking methodology.”

• “Provide evidence of engagement outcomes in the past 12 months.”

• “How do you ensure stewardship data integrity?”

• “Demonstrate compliance with UK Stewardship Code principles.”

Teams using platforms answer these comprehensively in hours. Teams using spreadsheets scramble for days - or provide unsatisfying responses.

Win competitive mandates

When two asset managers offer similar investment capabilities, stewardship quality becomes the differentiator. Purpose-built platforms demonstrate:

• Operational maturity

• Commitment to responsible investment

• Scalability to handle client-specific reporting

• Technological sophistication

  
  

Asset managers can enhance their ability to showcase a robust, technology-enabled stewardship process during finalist presentations.

Improve retention through transparency

Asset owners who can see your stewardship work in real time develop greater trust and confidence. Platforms enable:

• Client portal access to view engagement activity on their holdings

• Automated quarterly stewardship summaries

• On-demand reporting for board meetings

• Transparent outcome tracking

  
  

This transparency dramatically reduces “are they actually doing stewardship?” concerns that can trigger reviews.

3. Efficiency for teams of any size: Doing more with less

The scaling paradox every asset manager faces

Your AUM grows. Your portfolio holdings expand. Regulatory requirements multiply. Client expectations intensify. But your stewardship team doesn’t grow proportionally - and realistically, it can’t due to budget or resource constraints.

How platforms solve the scaling challenge

For small teams (1–3 people)

You’re already wearing multiple hats. A platform becomes your force multiplier:

• Eliminate administrative burden: Stop spending 40% of your time on documentation and reporting. The platform captures this automatically.

• Punch above your weight: Small teams using platforms manage 100+ engagements effectively - impossible with manual methods.

• Professional appearance: Your output looks as sophisticated as firms with 10-person teams. Asset owners can’t tell the difference.

• Avoid burnout: Reduce the soul-crushing manual work that drives talented people away from stewardship roles.

  
  

For mid-sized teams (4–8 people)

Coordination becomes your biggest challenge. Platforms provide:

• Central source of truth: Everyone sees the same real-time information. No more “which version is correct?”

• Seamless collaboration: Multiple analysts can work on related engagements without duplication or missed connections.

• Consistent quality: Built-in templates and workflows ensure every engagement meets your standards, regardless of who manages it.

• Manager visibility: Heads of teams can monitor progress across all engagements without constant status meetings.

For large teams (9+ people)

Complexity management becomes critical. Platforms enable:

• Portfolio-wide insights: Identify thematic patterns across 500+ engagements that would be harder to spot in spreadsheets.

• Resource optimisation: Instantly see which analysts are overloaded and which have capacity.

• Knowledge preservation: When team members leave, their engagement history and insights remain accessible.

• Cross-team coordination: Investment teams can see stewardship activity on their holdings; stewardship teams can see investment rationale.

  
  

Quantified efficiency gains

Asset managers can benefit from these time savings after implementing purpose-built platforms:

• 60% reduction in time spent on documentation (from 10 hours/week to 4 hours)

• 75% reduction in quarterly report generation (from 16 hours to 4 hours)

• 85% reduction in servicing ad hoc client requests (from 3 hours to 30 minutes — pull reports instantly)

• 50% reduction in regulatory reporting preparation (built-in compliance templates)

  
  

For a five-person team, this translates to reclaiming 25+ hours per week - essentially gaining a full additional team member without hiring.

What do you do with reclaimed time?

• More in-depth company research before engagements

• Additional engagement touchpoints (increasing success rates)

• Proactive client communication

• Strategic planning and thematic development

• Attending conferences and training (professional development that often gets deprioritised)

The efficiency isn’t just about doing the same work faster - it’s about elevating the quality and impact of your stewardship programme.

4. True ESG Integration: From siloed activity to firm-wide alignment

The integration gap most firms haven’t solved

ESG integration is the holy grail, yet most asset managers struggle with a fundamental disconnect:

Stewardship teams track engagement activity in their systems. Investment teams track investment notes and performance in theirs. The two rarely connect meaningfully.

This siloed approach undermines both teams:

• Portfolio managers make investment decisions without visibility into engagement outcomes.

• Stewardship teams engage companies without understanding investment thesis or conviction levels.

• ESG risks identified through engagement don’t flow back to investment analysis.

• The powerful feedback loop between stewardship and investment never materialises.

How platforms enable genuine integration

Bidirectional information flow

Purpose-built platforms bridge the gap:

• Portfolio managers see engagement history and outcomes when evaluating holdings.

• Stewardship teams see position sizes and conviction levels when prioritising engagements.

• Material ESG issues identified through engagement automatically flag for portfolio review.

• Engagement outcomes inform investment scoring and decision-making.

Investment-driven engagement prioritisation

Rather than engaging every portfolio company equally, platforms enable sophisticated prioritisation:

• Focus on high-conviction holdings where engagement can protect or enhance value.

• Identify ESG risks in meaningful portfolio positions before they impact returns.

• Coordinate engagement strategy with investment time horizons.

• Demonstrate clear connection between stewardship activity and investment process.

Evidence-based divestment decisions

When engagement isn’t working, platforms provide the documentation to support divestment:

• Clear engagement timeline showing good-faith efforts.

• Evidence of company non-responsiveness or regression.

• Outcome assessments supporting “no path to improvement” conclusions.

• Audit trail for explaining decisions to clients and regulators.

This transforms “we divested because of ESG concerns” into:“We engaged for 18 months, documented persistent issues, escalated appropriately, and ultimately divested after exhausting constructive options.”

Portfolio-level insights

True integration requires seeing patterns across your entire portfolio:

• Which sectors show the best engagement responsiveness?

• Are small-cap companies more or less engaged than large-caps?

• Which ESG themes yield the fastest outcomes?

• Where should you focus engagement resources for maximum impact?

Spreadsheets can’t answer these questions. Platforms provide these insights instantly through analytics dashboards.

Client storytelling

Integrated stewardship enables compelling narratives:

“In our European equity strategy, we identified governance concerns at three portfolio holdings through our stewardship process. We engaged all three companies over 14 months. Two achieved meaningful board refreshment, strengthening our investment conviction - we increased positions in both. The third proved unresponsive; we divested and reallocated capital. This demonstrates how stewardship actively protects and enhances portfolio value.”

This story is only possible with systems that connect stewardship activity to investment decisions - and with platforms that track and evidence every step.

The integration premium

Asset owners increasingly pay premium fees for genuinely integrated approaches:

• True integration differentiates you from “stewardship theatre” competitors.

• Demonstrates sophisticated investment process.

• Provides evidence of active risk management.

• Shows commitment to long-term value creation.

5. Regulatory confidence: From compliance burden to advantage

The regulatory landscape has elevated stewardship from best practice to an evidentially essential discipline - shaped by frameworks such as the UK Stewardship Code, the FCA’s SDR, and the EU’s CSRD.

Why manual systems fall short

Compiling Stewardship Code reports from spreadsheets means weeks of effort, endless cross-checks, and high risk of omissions. SDR disclosures demand consistent data on sustainability characteristics, engagement topics, and votes - impossible to maintain manually at scale.

How platforms simplify compliance

Purpose-built systems embed regulation from the ground up:

• Templates aligned to FRC and FCA expectations

• Built-in audit trails (who did what, and when)

• Voting rationale captured at point of decision

• Automated voting reports

• Instant data exports for auditors and regulators

Platforms also track completeness in real time - alerting teams to missed dealdlines for objectives before reporting season, not after.

Compliance as differentiator

Clients increasingly ask: “What systems support your stewardship compliance?” Being able to demonstrate robust, platform-enabled processes builds credibility and competitive edge. Compliance is no longer simply defensive - it’s a hallmark of operational excellence.

The strategic imperative: Platform or perish

Stewardship is now core to investment performance and client trust. Infrastructure is no longer an operational afterthought - it’s strategic.

Teams still relying on spreadsheets or half-baked solutions face clear disadvantages:

• Slower reporting cycles

• Higher compliance risk

• Lower engagement quality

• Lost mandates to better-equipped competitors

By contrast, platform-enabled teams achieve:

• 3× engagement capacity without additional headcount

• Faster client and regulatory reporting

• Seamless ESG integration

• Demonstrable outcomes and audit trails

• Happier, more effective teams

The “build vs buy” debate is effectively settled. For nearly all firms, in-house systems are costlier, slower, and less adaptable. Purpose-built solutions evolve continuously with regulation, market practice, and user feedback.

Every quarter without proper infrastructure represents lost efficiency, lost opportunities, and mounting risk.

Taking Action: Evaluating your stewardship infrastructure

Ask yourself:

• Can you produce a complete engagement report for a client portfolio in under 30 minutes?

• Can your investment team instantly see stewardship activity on their holdings?

• Do you have a full audit trail of every engagement and vote?

• Are your data and reporting processes scalable for future regulation?

If the answer to several is “no”, it’s time to assess your options.

How to evaluate solutions

1. Quantify your current costs: time spent on documentation, reporting, compliance, coordination. Multiply by your team’s loaded costs - the figure is often startling.

2. Define your priorities: compliance, efficiency, analytics, integration, reporting quality.

3. Compare providers: Look for stewardship expertise, user experience, regulatory readiness, and interoperability.

4. Calculate ROI: Even a single new mandate can cover the platform cost many times over.

5. Plan adoption: Modern systems deploy in days, not weeks or months - success depends on engagement and training, not coding.

The Impactive difference

Built by stewardship practitioners with over 100 years of combined experience, Impactive is designed specifically for asset managers who want to scale, professionalise, and evidence stewardship excellence.

It delivers:

• Intuitive, practitioner-designed workflows

• Embedded compliance with the UK Stewardship Code, SDR, and CSRD

• Advanced analytics and reporting tools

• Seamless integration with proxy voting and portfolio systems

• Continuous innovation and support

Conclusion: Stewardship infrastructure as competitive Advantage

The ROI case is proven. Purpose-built stewardship platforms pay for themselves through efficiency, compliance, and competitive wins - often within months.

Every week spent on manual processes is time lost to competitors who are already scaling faster and delivering stronger stewardship evidence.

In today’s market, excellent stewardship isn’t optional - and neither is the technology that enables it.

Ready to see what purpose-built stewardship infrastructure can do for your firm? Book a 30-minute discovery call with Impactive. We’ll assess your current setup, quantify potential ROI, and show you how to implement stewardship infrastructure fit for the future.