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Research and advisory firm Aite Group has a warning for wealth management firms that fail to focus on sustainability in their client investments: You will lose market share.
In a wide-ranging report on ESG integration, based on in-depth interviews with executives from 14 firms — global wealth managers, ratings agencies and private banking providers, as well as specialized data providers, senior analyst Wally Okby discusses the growing market for sustainable investing and what wealth managers and financial advisors can expect in the future.
Sustainable Investment Assets Are Growing
Sustainable assets totaled about $45 trillion globally in 2020, about eight times their size in 2012, according to Aite Group, which found that more than one-third of those assets are based in the U.S.
According to U.S. SIF, sustainable assets in the U.S. totaled $17.1 trillion in 2019, almost twice those in 2016, and more than one-quarter of those assets (27%) were managed by wealth managers on behalf of U.S. investors.
Among 31 global wealth managers surveyed by Aite in May 2020, 44% reported an increase in client demand for ESG assets, led by U.S. and Canadian wealth managers. The COVID-19 pandemic contributed to that demand, acting "as a strong impetus to invest better," according to Aite.
Another measure of growing retail demand for sustainable assets: $1.65 trillion in sustainable assets held by U.S. mutual fund and ETF assets as of year-end 2020 — 67% more than the total at year-end 2019, according to Morningstar.
What's Driving the Growth
Aite Group expects the momentum for sustainable assets to continue because of growing demand from investors, driven in part by many studies that companies managed with sustainability in mind as well as mutual funds and ETFs that invest more heavily in such companies, perform better.
Its growth forecast is also based on ecological challenges and social crises that attract sustainable and impact investing, the Green Deal in the European Union along with new rules for wealth managers and businesses there, the U.S rejoining the Paris Climate Accord and the Biden administration's reversal of policies that impeded sustainable investments in private retirement plans.
"With the United States back in the game, governments and the private sector are poised to do their best to support solutions to existential problems such as climate change, food insecurity and poverty," according to Aite.
Along with this growing momentum in favor of sustainable investing, Aite forecasts a bigger push for more data that can gauge, quantify and measure the impact of these investments for sustainability beyond the information currently available.
Sustainability Data Providers and Advisors' Desktops
Aite reports that about 50 ratings agencies globally score companies for environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors, but their ratings for the same companies often differ along with the level and types of disclosure among companies.
Aite expects the engagement of wealth managers with ratings agencies on sustainability issues will lead to consolidation among ratings firms, which will deepen the remaining agencies' power and influence over the sustainable investing market.
In addition, Aite forecasts a bigger role for data providers using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to focus on ESG issues, such as Truvalue Labs, acquired by FactSet late last year, and Clarity AI, which recently received an equity investment from BlackRock. The asset manager, the world's largest, plans to integrate Clarity AI's capabilities and data into its Aladdin platform.
