Globally we are witnessing a increasingly widespread diffusion of ethical finance; the investor, in the search for a financial profit, focuses on assets that respond to a series of social and environmental responsibility requirements. In the last two years in Europe there has been a significant growth in assets managed with sustainability criteria. Data relating to the 13 largest European countries show at the end of 2015 an amount of SRI investments (socially responsible investments) equal to € 22 trillion. In the last two years, despite a wide variability between countries, the overall growth has been over 30%.
Among the selection strategies, the dominant one remains the one related to the "exclusions” which is based on the desire to exclude from portfolios investments in sectors deemed non-compliant with predefined ethical values. The investments selected according to this criterion, with total assets of over 10 trillion euros, amount to almost 50% of the total stock.
At the market level, there is a progressive interest from retail investors who hold around 22% of the assets compared to 78% from institutional investors. Only two years ago this gap was much more accentuated (97% institutional investors, 3% retail investors).
Numerous surveys have shown that the main deterrents for investors in moving towards SRI products are: the fear that the inclusion of ESG (environmental, social and governance) factors in the investment strategy could have negative effects on returns; the difficulty of finding a wide range of products on the market.
Recent analyzes show that performance is not a discriminating factor for making investment choices in the SRI funds segment, which in many cases have recorded outperforming the corresponding non-SRI benchmarks.
However, one of the knots to untie remains the difficulty of finding these instruments on some markets due to a still limited amount compared to the total. In 2016, 101 new ESG funds were placed on the market in Europe, a value slightly higher than the 96 in 2015 and the 92 in 2014. At the end of 2016, SRI funds amounted to 3,6% of the total funds on the European market.
