2025 Stewardship Annual Report
Allspring believes stewardship is integral to the investment process. This year’s report includes details on our proxy voting activity, engagement priorities, case studies reflecting our focus, and summaries of our climate transition strategies.
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Authors
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Stewardship Team
7/20/2026
74 min read
Topic
Sustainable Investing
Key takeaways
- Our stewardship activities aim to improve investee corporate disclosure and information flow to inform decision-making in our investment process.
- The Stewardship platform reflects our values of exercising care, prudence, and fiduciary duty by engaging investee companies and by voting proxies on behalf of our clients.
- In 2025, we engaged with over 100 companies, representing $52 billion of invested corporate assets. Case studies reflect the breadth and depth of our analysis.
Executive summary
Our collaborative approach to stewardship
We believe our collaborative approach to stewardship sets us apart from how other asset managers approach engagement. Our Stewardship team organizes and leads company-wide engagements that also include many of our specialized investment teams. By bringing together investment professionals from equity and fixed income and bridging both asset class and region, we leverage the deep fundamental research and diverse investment perspectives of our investment teams and the environmental, social, and governance expertise of our Stewardship team.
Engagement allows Allspring to constructively advance financial, operational, and sustainability performance in the years to come, which is ultimately to the benefit of our clients.
Environmental engagement priorities
Climate change and investee company transition strategies are a perennial imperative given the urgency of response and time compression. We meet companies in the systemically important, high-emitting sectors where we have a large investment exposure to evaluate the robustness of investee climate transition strategies.
Biodiversity is also a high priority; without healthy biological systems, the planet cannot adequately provide the natural capital we depend on. Biodiversity issues engaged on include water management, land use (including deforestation), plastics, and the circular economy. We address these topics with companies where the risks and opportunities are most material—for example, firms in the food and agriculture, metals and mining, waste management, integrated energy, and utilities sectors. As long-term investors, we encourage companies to disclose how they have adopted or plan to incorporate business practices consistent with the sustainable use and management of natural capital and respect for the biodiverse contexts in which they operate.
Corporate governance and proxy voting
Effective governance is critical to company performance and management. Voting proxies give shareholders input on corporate governance matters, including holding boards accountable and protecting shareholder rights. Our proxy voting framework relies on our equity teams’ deep fundamental research to inform our votes.
Related insights
The 30th United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP30) is likely to deliver incremental rather than transformative progress, as most countries remain misaligned with the Paris Agreement and net-zero pathways.
All investing involves risks, including the possible loss of principal. There can be no assurance that any investment strategy will be successful. Investments fluctuate with changes in market and economic conditions and in different environments due to
numerous factors, some of which may be unpredictable. Each asset class has its own risk and return characteristics.
This marketing communication is for professional/institutional and qualified clients/investors only. Not for retail use. Recipients who do not wish to be treated as professional/institutional or qualified clients/investors should notify their Allspring contact immediately.
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