Searches for ESG funds increase rapidly – with sustainability issues dominating

Posted on: July 2nd, 2020

Searches for ESG funds increase rapidly – with sustainability issues dominating

Usage of the adviser friendly sustainable investment fund database ‘Fund EcoMarket’ increased sharply over the last six months.

  • Fund EcoMarket welcomed 7.9k unique users over the 6 months to 30 June 2020 – compared to 5.5k over the same period in 2019 (source: Google Analytics).
  • The average session time was 4.31 minutes.

Commenting on the numbers SRI Services founder Julia Dreblow added:

 ‘I am delighted that usage of our site continues to increase rapidly as this means that more people are looking for information about sustainable, responsible and ethical funds. 

A year on year increase of nearly 50% points to rapidly growing interest and individual investors showing signs of following the institutional investment market boom.

With the support of our fund partners, the site free to use which is important to us as we want to make it as easy as possible for advisers and others to find investments with higher ESG & sustainability standards.

Our hope is that this is a useful contribution toward achieving ‘Net Zero’ and supporting the #BuildBackBetter movement… which although the vocabulary has changed over the years is exactly what the site was set up to do 10 years ago.’

With regard to what people are looking for on the site there were 23,571 individual items selected (clicks) during the first half of 2020 (according to Google Analytics).

The top 50 individual searches are listed below.

This list shows the need for users to mix both financial and ESG factors when searching funds.

In particular it highlights that the dominant area of interest is Sustainability and Environmental Themes (two of our ‘SRI Styles’  labels) – and in particularly the desire to ‘Avoid coal, oil and gas companies’ – being the most searched for individual policy option.

 

1.     OEIC/Unit Trust
2.     Sustainability Themed
3.     Equity
4.     Environmentally Themed
5.     Global
6.     Mixed Asset
7.     UK
8.     Environmental policy
9.     Coal, oil &/or gas majors excluded
10.  Equity Income
11.  Armaments manufacturers avoided
12.  Fixed Interest
13.  Ethical – Balanced
14.  Investment Trust
15.  Tobacco production avoided
16.  Passive Equity
17.  Sustainability policy
18.  Unclassified
19.  Climate change / GHG policy
20.  ESG Plus
21.  Asia Pacific
22.  Europe
23.  USA
24.  Emerging Markets
25.  Ethical – Negative
26.  Fracking and tar sands excluded
27.  Invests in clean energy/renewables
28.  Property
29.  Pension
30.  Europe Ex-UK
31.  ETF
32.  Social Themed
33.  Not Set
34.  Asia Pacific ex Japan
35.  Ethically Balanced
36.  Animal testing exclusion policy
37.  Deforestation / palm oil policy
38.  SICAV/Offshore*
39.  Available via an ISA
40.  Limits exposure to carbon intensive industries
41.  Gambling avoidance policy
42.  Environmental damage and pollution policy
43.  Pornography avoidance policy
44.  Europe >50% UK
45.  Human rights policy
46.  Animal welfare policy
47.  Responsible Ownership (FM company)
48.  Ethical policies
49.  Child labour exclusion
50.  Positive environmental impact theme