ESG criteria

Asset managers are scrambling to rebrand their sustainable investment funds as stepped-up regulatory crackdowns on greenwashing risk deepening fragmentation in the industry, experts warned at the Morningstar Sustainable Investing Summit in Amsterdam.

It is very difficult to apply ESG criteria consistently to purely passive investments. Active investments lend themselves much better to this. It is easier to apply an integration approach that goes beyond exclusions in active management. In the end, it is all about the client’s profile, which has to match the risk/reward profile of a fund or strategy and the client’s sustainability preferences.