UKSIF letter to the Capital Markets Industry Taskforce (CMIT): Financial Reporting Council’s Stewardship Code Review

In co-ordination with our Policy Committee, UKSIF has written a letter to the UK Capital Markets Industry Taskforce (CMIT) on the upcoming review of the UK Stewardship Code.

In our letter, we highlight some of the existing strengths of the UK’s Stewardship Code and the positive role it has played to date in helping directly shape stewardship codes and regulatory practices across many jurisdictions overseas. We believe the Code has been a vital contributor to the UK’s longstanding reputation as the world’s ‘quality’ market and our pre-eminent status as an attractive destination for international investment. Our letter reaffirms our view that the Code has helped embed good stewardship practice in firms’ decision-making and strategies, helping to promote long-term value for our members’ clients and beneficiaries and ensure that firms take their shareholder rights more seriously.

We acknowledge in our letter the necessity for the FRC to consider streamlining to existing reporting against the Code to ensure that reporting is as decision-useful as possible for clients and other stakeholders, and we note our support for a number of the regulator’s recently confirmed interim voluntary measures aimed at helping achieve this. This includes the increased flexibility for signatories in terms of cross-referencing.

We look forward to engaging with the CMIT, FRC, and wider industry stakeholders in due course on the Code review, and please reach out to the UKSIF team directly if you would like to view a copy of our letter.

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