Our 2024 impact report shines a spotlight on another year of relentless efforts to transform the financial system into a force for good. Here are five key highlights from the report that showcase our progress to promote responsible investment and address critical global challenges.
1. Advancing climate action in the financial sector
We continued to hold financial institutions accountable for their role in the climate crisis. Last year, we engaged with Europe’s top 25 banks to push for stronger climate policies, urging them to phase out coal, oil, and gas financing, ensuring they take full responsibility for their carbon emissions; and scaling up sustainable financing.
This included coordinating 24 investors worth $1.24 trillion in assets under management to call on Barclays to commit to explicit restrictions on providing finance for all companies which are exclusively focused on fossil fuel extraction. As a result of our constant campaigning, Barclays’ CEO has agreed to meet with ShareAction and the investor group we coordinate every year for the next three years to discuss the bank’s energy policy updates.
2. Championing workers’ rights
We launched a campaign to ask major retailers like Next and JD Sports to pay their workers a real Living Wage. Alongside our public campaign we launched an investor guide on tackling low pay in the UK retail sector, where nearly 818,.000 workers are not earning a real Living Wage. We’re calling on investors to adopt an responsible investment approach that sets a new standard across the UK retail sector.
We were delighted the Government promised to make ethnicity pay gap reporting mandatory for companies with over 250 employees. Thanks to years of campaigning from many organisations, ethnicity pay gap reporting is set to be included in the new Equality Bill, due to be launched later in the year. While we wait for the law to catch up, we continue to engage directly with companies to urge them to voluntarily report on their ethnicity pay gap. It’s encouraging to see 38 of the biggest companies in the UK reporting their data, up from 15 when our campaign began in 2022. You can read why this is so important here.
3. Releasing sector-leading research and guidance
It was a busy year for our teams, producing expert, insight-led research and guidance on the pressing issues facing investors, banks and policymakers. We published:
- Voting Matters – analysing how the world’s largest asset managers voted in 2023 on environmental and social, focused shareholder resolutions.
- Clearing the Air – exploring the close links between air quality, the economy, and our health, and making the case for investor action.
- Insuring Disaster – assessing the policies and practices of 65 of the world’s largest insurance companies across a range of environmental and social issues.
- Mind the strategy gap – assessing the decarbonisation and sustainable finance targets of Europe’s 20 biggest banks
- The costs of low pay – an investor guide on tackling low pay in the UK retail sector, calling on investors to adopt an responsible investment approach that sets a new standard across the sector.
- Undermining transition, risking capital – our third RISE paper, on the need for a new investor blueprint for the fossil fuel sector.
And we worked with partners to produce:
- Why nature-loss is material for your financial institution – produced by SUSTAIN, this briefing for investors highlights the critical need for materiality screening to understand nature-related impacts, dependencies and risks.
- Risk management in protected areas – produced with the UN’s Environment Programme’s World Conservation Monitoring Centre, this report explains the vital role of protected areas for biodiversity conservation.
4. Prioritising public health
We contacted the CEOs of major global food and drink companies asking them to improve the way they report their sales. With a group of 31 investors, we asked PepsiCo, the Coca-Cola Company, Mondelēz International, Kraft Heinz, Kellanova and General Mills to follow in the footsteps of the likes of Unilever and Danone in adopting internationally accepted nutrition standards for publicly reporting the healthiness of their sales. Our campaign received widespread media attention, including in the Financial Times and Nutrition Insight.
We launched two new reports: Clearing the Air, which explores the close links between air quality, the economy, and our health; and Workplace Health is Workplace Wealth outlining the significant human and financial costs of the poor health of UK workers. We also worked with a group of shareholders to file a resolution with world’s largest food manufacturer, Nestlé, urging it to set a target to increase the proportion of its sales that comes from healthier products. We also called on Nestlé to implement internationally accepted standards that define healthy food.
5. Tackling biodiversity loss
Biodiversity loss is a huge global challenge, and our work in 2024 emphasised reducing the environmental impact of the agrochemicals industry. Collaborating with investors and NGOs, we engaged with major pesticide producers to align their practices with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. We also collaborated with the Farm Animal Investment Risk and Return Initiative (FAIRR) to strengthen investor knowledge and understanding of industry risks for both pesticide and fertiliser producers.
We attended the UN’s biodiversity conference, COP16, and held a panel event with investors and other NGOs to discuss investor action on hazardous chemicals. We discussed the relevance of the chemicals industry in achieving the goals of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the business case for a sustainable chemicals transition, and the challenges and opportunities for investor engagement to drive fast and meaningful change in this space.
6. Empowering shareholders and the public
We attended 70 Annual General Meetings (AGM) across 14 countries, asking 88 questions to challenge companies on issues ranging from climate commitments to fair pay.
“[Asking AGM questions is a] very effective and important mechanism. I think it’s smart, clever and actually a good way to use bureaucracy to gain access that would otherwise be hard to achieve.” ShareAction supporter
We also utilised one of our most powerful tools – working with shareholders to file a resolution, meaning companies have to discuss and vote on key issues. This included filing a resolution at Yara International’s AGM – Europe's biggest synthetic fertiliser producer. The resolution demanded the company publish science-based scope 3 emissions targets by 2025 that would cover the whole of its value chain, including upstream emissions from fossil-based raw materials. 17 per cent of non-state shareholders supported the resolution and 8 per cent abstained against the Board’s recommendation to vote against the resolution, which signals an increasing focus among major investors on the climate impacts of the fertiliser industry.
A huge thank you to all our supporters, the investment community, trustees, funders, collaborators across civil society and colleagues.
