The Investor Participant Voices series highlights the expertise and experiences of Nature Action 100 Investor Participants.
Mads Steinmüller is Head of Climate & Nature – Responsible Investment Team at Danske Bank Asset Management, where he leads the integration of climate and nature across investment processes. Below, Steinmüller shares his thoughts on the value of the Nature Action 100 Company Benchmark as a resource for engaging companies on nature.
What value do you see as an investor participant in the Nature Action 100 Company Benchmark?
Back in early 2023, Danske Bank set our first biodiversity engagement targets. At the time, nature was still an emerging theme in financial markets, and no established frameworks existed to guide investor action. To fill this gap, we developed our own proprietary engagement framework, drawing on early versions of Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosures, Science Based Targets Network, and Business for Nature. The introduction of the Nature Action 100 Company Benchmark has since provided a common playing field for investors and companies, a shared foundation that has improved mutual understanding and made engagement more effective. Participating in the benchmark has strengthened our overall approach: It brings greater efficiency and accountability to our stewardship work and enables us to align our engagement questions with other investors. This alignment has increased both the consistency and credibility of our dialogues. As a result, we’ve seen improved quality in our engagement meetings and more constructive responses from companies.
Being part of Nature Action 100 has also connected us to a broader network of like-minded investors. This collaboration helps deliver clearer signals to companies, which is critical for driving meaningful, real-world progress on nature.
How have you been able to use or plan to use the company benchmark to inform your engagements with companies under the initiative?
The company benchmark provides a clear, structured, and transparent framework for assessing how companies manage nature-related risks and opportunities. This allows us to set precise expectations and compare companies against their peers in a meaningful way. Importantly, it helps us tailor our engagement depending on the maturity of the company, whether that means encouraging higher ambition, pressing for specific targets, or addressing material nature topics. Over time, it also gives us a way to track progress and assess the real impact of our investor engagements.
How do you think the Nature Action 100 Company Benchmark compares to other nature-related benchmark frameworks?
What sets the Nature Action 100 Company Benchmark apart is its focus on management quality, which can be assessed across sectors and nature challenges. Furthermore, it aligns closely with frameworks like TNFD, Business for Nature, and others. The practical design makes it intuitive for both investors and companies. In fact, we encourage many of the companies we engage with to see the benchmark as a ready-made roadmap they can use to improve their nature-related strategies and disclosures.
What other nature- or climate-related analyses have you used to further your engagements with companies?
In addition to the company benchmark, we rely on our own management quality framework, which is closely aligned and helps us maintain consistency across engagements. We also use ENCORE data combined with company revenue information to assess potential financial risks related to nature, such as regulatory exposure, commodity dependencies, and biodiversity impacts. Looking ahead, we plan to incorporate asset-level location data into our analysis. This will enable even more tailored and site-specific engagement, which is critical given that nature risks are often highly localized and unique to each company’s operations.
Mads Steinmüller is Head of Climate and Nature at Danske Bank Asset Management, where he leads the integration of climate and nature across investment processes. At Danske Bank, he has been instrumental in setting nature-related targets, enhancing disclosures, and embedding environmental risks into core financial decision-making. He is a frequent speaker at global sustainable finance events and the author of several white papers on nature-related topics. He actively engages with companies, peers, and policymakers to drive systemic change toward a nature-positive and resilient economy.