Time and time again, advisors are being told they need to join the sustainable investing revolution or lose out on potential business. A new study by Morgan Stanley backs up that contention.
The report from Morgan Stanley's Institute for Sustainable Investing found that interest in SI in the general population has grown dramatically. In 2015, 71% of investors it surveyed were interested or very interested in sustainable investing, while in 2019, that number is 85%. As usual with this subject, the millennial numbers are more pointed: in 2017, 84% of millennials were interested and very interested, while today it's 95%.
But actions speak louder than words. In 2017 42% of the general population and 50% of millennials had sustainable investments. Today, 52% of the general population and 67% of millennials do.
"The implication? You should be seeing more and more of these folks showing up at your office wanting to talk about sustainable investing, so be ready for that," said Morningstar's director of sustainability research, Jon Hale, in a recent webinar. "Also, it's time for you to be asking your clients and prospects about sustainable investing. Don't require them to bring it up; you bring it up. Chances are they are interested."
He added that the flows of money into sustainable funds jumped dramatically in 2019 with $13.5 billion year to date, almost triple the inflows of 2018.
Morgan Stanley's online survey of 800 active individual investors with minimum investable assets of $100,000 had an oversampling of 200 millennials, the firm stated.
