Long-term good, not short-term gain

“The essence of stewardship is to think 'I have a responsibility to look after something that is not mine, for the benefit of others'", says Wookey, echoing the role of advisers who have a fiduciary duty to manage their clients' money in the clients' interests, not the adviser's own.

"Stewardship will encourage people to think long term, and to avoid short term gain that might cause longer term detriment,” Wookey adds.

The UK Stewardship Code, launched in 2020, sets high stewardship standards for those investing money on behalf of UK savers and pensioners, and those that support them.

According to Corah: "The revised stewardship code is about thinking systematically because an issue our industry has had, has been doing a bilateral investor/company basis.

“We are now invited by the Stewardship Code to ask investors much more what are they doing to contribute to build a much more systematic environment for value creation.” 

For this reason, Corah says that when advisers and wealth managers talk with clients and companies about environmental and social issues, these issues tend to have a widespread impact on everyone.

For example, consider climate change - one change in direction at board level after constructive engagement between investors and the board of that company could have a globally positive impact. 

Corah adds: "Every company is going to be impacted in some shape or form. You need a systemic solution to a systemic problem.

"So the question should be 'How are you going to create a better environment for value creation, not just what your company does?'"

For him, the revised Stewardship Code asks: 'How are you, as an investor, trying to tackle systemic problems?'

Because of the potential for wide impact from one act of effective stewardship, Corah states: "We need to help investors think about things in a holistic way."

Anita Boniface is a freelance journalist