I en analyse sætter mediet institutionalinvestor.com fokus på hvorfor mange ESG fonde har svært ved at skalere. Antallet af ESG fonde er eskaleret i de seneste år og mange tror, at lanceringen af et nyt ESG-investeringsselskab eller ESG-fond vil være en automatisk succes. Men en analyse af data bag fondene viser, at dette er langt fra sandheden: De fleste af disse bestræbelser mislykkes, hedder det i analysen.
Many investment professionals might read these and believe that launching a new ESG investment firm or ESG offering will be an automatic success. Our analysis of the data shows that this is far from the truth: Most of these efforts fail.
Uddrag fra analysen her:
Drivers of Growth
There is a good explanation for why we’ve seen an increase in the supply of ESG funds: demand.
We identify four key forces driving that demand. First, data availability on ESG topics has grown substantially richer over the past years, with data quality also improving. This has allowed asset owners and regulators to ask managers ESG-related questions. It has also enabled more managers to analyze at scale the impact of ESG considerations on a portfolio’s performance and characteristics.
Second, accumulating evidence that ESG issues are financially material has empowered managers to position ESG integration as part of a rigorous investment process and refute the past misconception that ESG is about investing just on the basis of values.
Third, societal pressures have led asset managers to want to better understand how companies behave before including them in their portfolios, to ensure alignment with normative principles (e.g., human rights). Managers have increasingly been scrutinized for holdings that made headlines for the wrong reasons, generating reputational nightmares.
Last, investors have realized that they can utilize the power of capital to alter unsustainable corporate behavior and help solve the world’s most agonizing problems, like climate change.
All of these developments have attracted managers’ attention in recent years. As a result, the number of investment managers that have signed on to the United Nations’ Principles for Responsible Investment reached 2,245 as of September 20, with about 66 percent of them having joined in just the past five years (Figure 1). These managers may be running socially responsible investment funds (largely based on exclusions of certain industries and/or revenue-generating activities) or impact funds (specifically targeting ESG outcomes). Other funds might integrate ESG analysis alongside traditional financial analysis, to enhance returns and/or reduce the regulatory and reputation-related risks of their portfolio companies.
Snapshot of the ESG Fund Landscape
As more managers signed on to the PRI, the market became flooded with ESG investment solutions. As of 2018 the Global Sustainable Investment Alliance reported that about $30.7 trillion was allocated to sustainable investing assets. This figure has more than doubled from roughly $13.3 trillion in 2012.
The growth in the number of ESG funds has been equally impressive. Using Refinitiv’s database for funds under the Ethical category (defined as those whose investment criteria include ethical and social concerns; Refinitiv does not currently classify funds under an ESG category per se), we find that there are currently 6,618 publicly available investment products incorporating ESG-related topics in one form or another. Their total size is roughly $2.6 trillion. Of these funds, 54 percent are allocating capital in the public equity asset class, representing about 53 percent of the total size.
The pace at which ESG funds have been launched over the past several years is striking. The oldest fund in the database is Amundi’s Pioneer Fund, which launched in 1928. It was followed by Robeco’s Sustainable Global Stars Equity Fund in 1938 and UBS’s Switzerland Sustainable Fund in 1949. The real boom in ESG funds started in 2012, with more than 40 percent of all ESG funds launched over just the past five years (Figure 2). Of the funds available, about 60 percent are domiciled in Europe, and about 40 percent have a global geographical focus for their investments. Managers have responded unequivocally to client demand with new products.
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https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1q2jyhcb8lmz9/Why-ESG-Funds-Fail-to-Scale
