Aberdeen Investments has published insights from its 2025 engagement highlights for active equities and fixed income, and Aberdeen Group’s 2025 Stewardship Report. The depth of senior management involvement in engagement was a defining feature of 2025, with C-suite involvement increasingly a feature from investee companies.
In addition, Aberdeen Investments has expanded its reporting to provide greater transparency on stewardship across private markets and indirect holdings. Aberdeen believes that including private markets within stewardship reporting provides a more complete view of how capital is overseen across portfolios. While industry reporting has traditionally focused on listed equity engagement, coverage of private markets stewardship is typically less detailed and less prominent, despite its growing importance within diversified portfolios.
Analysis
In 2025, Aberdeen undertook 1,698 ESG engagements across public markets investments and voted on 76,809 shareholder resolutions, although it is the effectiveness of engagement, how it is conducted, and what it achieves that counts.
Aberdeen’s analysis highlights that change often occurs unevenly, with some issues resolved quickly while others require sustained engagement over multiple years. The most effective outcomes were linked to engagements grounded in financial materiality, with specific, actionable and time-bound objectives.
Across the Aberdeen disclosures, progress has followed a consistent pattern:
- Approximately 40% of engagements remained in early-stage discovery, identifying environmental, social and environmental (ESG) issues for the first time.
- Around 50% progressed through 2025 with companies formalising actions plans, setting climate targets and progressing workforce initiatives.
- Just over 10% reached completion, having met their agreed milestones, reflecting steady multi year progress.
Dan Grandage, Chief Sustainable Investment Officer, Aberdeen Investments, said:
“At Aberdeen, we see engagement as a deliberate and outcomes-driven process that helps us test assumptions, close information gaps and encourage actions that can protect long-term value for our clients. Our Stewardship Report and engagement highlights for active equities and fixed income provide transparency on how we prioritise these conversations and why they matter.
“What stood out in 2025 was the depth of senior leadership engagement. Conversations involved CEOs, CFOs and board-level decision-makers, underlining how central these discussions have become to shaping long-term strategy.
“As stewardship continues to evolve, it is essential that reporting reflects how influence is exercised across the full investment universe. Fixed income and private markets are central to this, yet often underrepresented in industry disclosures.”
Climate
Climate strategy was the dominant theme in Aberdeen’s 2025 engagements. With the collapse of the Net Zero Banking Alliance, engagements with global financial institutions centred on net zero strategy and commitments. Aberdeen set clear expectations to maintain climate ambition and learnt that the strongest institutions view their net zero commitments as core to long‑term business strategy and are prepared to uphold them independently.
Across high emitting sectors, Aberdeen explored transition risk and engagements gave clearer insight into how companies are maturing in their transition planning with many beginning to match ambition with a more realistic view of what credible delivery requires. Aberdeen also saw growing awareness of Just Transition considerations, particularly in emerging markets, where companies were more open to discussing workforce and community impacts. Progress, however, remained uneven.
2025 marked a shift in climate conversations, from mitigation alone to climate adaptation and resilience. Companies are deepening their assessment of physical climate risks, expanding scenario analysis, and increasing investment in practical resilience measures across vulnerable sectors. Many businesses share Aberdeen’s view that physical risk has real impacts on operations and that incremental resilience upgrades are necessary.
Cyber Security
Cyber security proved to be the most challenging of the roadmap topics to discuss in depth, as it’s highly sensitive and many companies treat detailed information as confidential, even to investors. As a result, some firms were reluctant to engage beyond high level discussions, limiting the depth of conversation.
Aberdeen found companies more willing to engage when cyber security was framed through a risk management lens, enabling constructive discussions. A key lesson was that engagement and milestones are often most effective when they begins with clear risk identification, as this creates the foundation for stronger accountability and meaningful progress.
Nature & Biodiversity
Nature and biodiversity remains a relatively nascent engagement theme but momentum increased as global attention to nature related risks grew.
2025 involved laying the groundwork: raising awareness, building issuer understanding, and encouraging consideration of financial implications. Issuers were generally receptive, and Aberdeen gained confidence that dialogue can evolve into measurable targets in 2026. A key takeaway was that nature and biodiversity offers the greatest potential for rapid improvement when engagement is sustained and focused.
Stuart Riddick, Senior Sustainable Investment Manager, Aberdeen Investments, adds;
“2025 reinforced that engagement supports better outcomes when expectations are clear, focused on the most material issues and backed by measurable milestones. When investors make a clear request, explain why it matters, and set an appropriate timeframe for delivery, the progress made by companies can be faster and conversations far more constructive. We saw that in 2025 across areas such as climate targets, governance and cyber resilience, where clarity helped turn dialogue into action. But we also saw that progress may not be linear on more complex issues, including climate change in hard to abate sectors, and supply chain oversight, where change will require sustained engagement over time.”
