Rezonanz Boosts Investors’ Stewardship Toolkit
Following the publication of a voting-focused ranking system last month, the engagement tracker will formally launch by end of Q2.
A new tech platform is looking to offer improved voting and engagement analytics for investors, bolstering their stewardship efforts and enhancing transparency from asset managers.
Launched last month, rezonanz provides responsible investors with quantitative analytics across individual and collaborative initiatives. This includes a ‘Voting for Sustainability’ ranking system designed to measure proxy voting records’ alignment with sustainability benchmarks and asset owners’ preferences.
Rezonanz was the joint winner of a pitch event for stewardship and engagement tools held during ESG Investor’s Stewardship Summit 2024, alongside Norwegian tech company Zerolytics.
“Our main focus is to empower institutional investors with quantitative benchmarking and software tools, specifically for stewardship,” Eleanor Willi, CEO and Co-founder of rezonanz, told ESG Investor. “We’re looking at companies from an investor perspective, highlighting sustainability topics in order to provide a stewardship focus, rather than bringing in another layer of ESG data information at company level.”
From an asset manager perspective, rezonanz provides voting, engagement and ownership data, giving a unified view of aggregate statistics from single-company engagements. It also aims to improve managers’ engagement performance with investee companies, with the tool flagging votes to follow up on. This can be utilised to tighten feedback loops and improve the clarity of management asks, Willi explained.
In addition, the platform allows asset owners to quantify and compare asset managers’ stewardship efforts, giving it credibility as a selection and monitoring criterion.
“The alignment piece between asset managers and owners is really important,” Willi stressed. “The platform is a new offering we haven’t seen in the market, which we think can help in measuring alignment or misalignment between the two.”
Willi referenced an Accenture study from 2021 that stated more than 90% of the 250 asset managers surveyed sought to transform their approach to stewardship by 2026, and managers outside Europe representing over US$8 trillion in assets now integrate stewardship as an ESG strategy.
Accelerated expansion
Rezonanz’s ‘Voting for Sustainability’ ranking system aims to promote transparency and accountability among asset managers, helping them to align their actions with the long-term interests of investors and society. It also strives to enable investors to support responsible asset managers.
Rezonanz is Zurich-based, and their initial ranking is focused on the publicly disclosed proxy voting records of 13 asset managers playing an influential role in the Swiss funds market. The tool standardises the information to create a comparable dataset, which is then assessed against a benchmark based on Ethos’ voting recommendations on sustainability-related proposals.
The tool is targeting 100 asset managers by the end of Q3, and Willi confirmed their database already covers nearly 10,000 companies.
In addition, rezonanz is currently developing an engagement tracker, which is currently in beta testing and should be rolled out after this year’s annual general meetings season in early June.
“Our goal there is integrate the research around collaboration and what works best in terms of engagement to pioneer a new form of collaborative engagement, giving investors insight into what others are working on,” said Willi. “The time spent on engagement, tracking, and reporting is very expensive and resource-intensive. With better tools, investors can approach this more strategically and effectively, overcoming data barriers.”
Prior to setting up rezonanz, Willi spent three years at Dutch asset manager Robeco, including more than a year as ESG investing specialist, before joining Swiss bank Zürcher Kantonalbank as impact specialist. In 2022, Willi founded the Investor Impact Initiative – a non-profit aiming to quantify investor impact through rigorous empirical research and user-friendly tools. The initiative now works in partnership with rezonanz.
Willi explained that her years of experiences in asset management had taught her that internal tools only had limited potential for impact. Instead, an engagement tracking software that brings all the pieces together, with an additional collaborative angle, can go much further, she said.
“The idea is to build up a quantitative framework over the course of the next year that integrates both voting and engagement to understand impact,” Willi added. “By the end of next year, our vision is to have a solid framework integrating all layers of activity that helps us understand where investors are having an impact, and where they could do more.”
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