Final Brunel RI & Stewardship Outcomes Report demonstrates 2025 impact, adding to longer-term progress
Brunel’s new Outcomes Report captures significant progress against our Responsible Investment (RI) priorities, as 2025 achievements were added to Brunel’s accumulated impact since inception.
We continued to advance system‑level stewardship through a range of initiatives, including:
- Public policy engagement via the Transition Finance Council
- Study tours & direct engagements (e.g. with China’s central bank, finance ministry) to inform, support sustainable finance developments in China
- Collaborative work on:
- Shareholder rights with the Governance for Growth Investor Campaign
- Sustainable value creation with the Issuer and investor Forum
“We are finishing strongly – Brunel did not slow its progress on its RI ambitions through 2025,” said Laura Chappell, Chief Executive Officer. “Furthermore, we can point to tangible outcomes through the reporting year – and across the years since we were founded. As we approach our endpoint, we offer demonstrable proof of what you can achieve in the UK with a pension pool of productive capital and a strong vision to invest responsibly for our members’ futures.”
The report includes feature articles that explore Brunel’s approach to voting; how Brunel harnesses data effectively; our second Climate Stocktake; our approach to exerting systemic influence in the UK; and a recent sustainable finance engagement trip to China.
It reports on progress across Brunel’s targets and ambitions for our seven core RI themes: Biodiversity & Nature; Climate Change; Human Rights & Social Issues; Diversity, Equity & Inclusion; Tax & cost, transparency & fairness; Cyber & AI; and Circular Economy. Case studies illustrate our work throughout the report.
Highlights captured within the report include:
- 100% of in-scope assets now covered by Paris-aligned objectives & targets
- 80% of infrastructure assets now contribute to sustainable outcomes
- 4,390 instances of progress on key milestones across 2019-2025
- Major progress on asset owner-asset manager engagement
Such progress was only possible thanks to a strong partnership. As the report notes in its Conclusion: ‘Clients invested time and resources… [and] … provided the ambition that drove progress across complex RI priorities. The mandate they set enabled Brunel to integrate RI risks throughout the investment chain.’
Our engagement provider, EOS, engaged with 651 companies on 3,144 environmental, social, governance, strategy, risk and communication issues and objectives in 2025 on our behalf. At least one milestone was progressed across 41% of its objectives during the year. The report also highlights case studies on ongoing engagements and success stories such as Shell and Barclays.
Priority themes
Brunel’s three priority themes are Biodiversity & Nature; Climate Change; and Human Rights and Social Issues.
In all these themes, progress though the year was wide-ranging. On climate change, for example, we completed our 2025 Climate Stocktake, a comprehensive evaluation of Brunel’s delivery against our Climate Change Policy and implementation plan. On Biodiversity & Nature, we completed TNFD gap analysis assessing portfolio exposure to water risk and deforestation.
While we delivered across all areas, we rapidly accelerated the work on Human Rights and Social Issues theme – specifically on strengthening analytics relating to Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas and exposure to defence.
AI has also dominated the headlines, and we have taken action to promote safeguards, while also utilising the power of AI to enhance our stewardship processes. The report captures a range of case studies on AI deployment.
Partnerships
Many of the achievements outlined above have been made possible through partnerships with our peers, partner funds, asset managers and service providers. This report brings our underlying philosophy to life and showcases how we continue to drive alignment with our delegated managers including through our work on the Asset Owner Statement on Climate Stewardship and Climate-Alignment Maturity Expectations. One example is collaborative work we undertook with Oaktree on our Multi-Asset Credit portfolio – the work is featured in a case study on p.21 of the report.
The report demonstrates that our impact has continued to be wide-ranging, in line with our core priorities. Brunel is determined that its achievements can be taken on and used by others, as Faith Ward MBE makes clear in her conclusion.
“We want what Brunel has built and delivered to be borrowed, copied, repurposed and harnessed elsewhere, whether at asset owners or asset managers. Whether in targets, outcomes, impact, engagement, or industry and policy coordination, Brunel has proved what is possible. May that give others hope – and opportunity.”