Of the European assets flowing into ETFs last year, a higher proportion went to trackers with ESG labels than trackers without that sustainability feature. Sustainable fixed income ETFs were particularly popular in Europe.
This is according to Amundi asset management’s Money Monitor, in which the fund house has summarised the inflow and outflow figures of all ETFs available in Europe. In 2022, a net 82 billion euro flowed into ETFs from Europe. Almost 65 per cent of this benefited ESG variants.
Within fixed income, almost 11 billion euros flowed into non-ESG ETFs, compared to almost 21 billion to trackers that do carry the sustainability label. Corporate bonds were particularly popular among investors with a sustainability preference. Other than a small dip in summer 2022, inflows have been steady over a year. High yield and money market ETFs were less popular among sustainable investors.
Sustainability features aside, the popularity of ETFs in corporate bonds roughly paralleled that of government bonds. The former category welcomed some EUR 17 billion, the latter EUR 18 billion.
ESG ETFs in the lead
Equities
Within equity index tracking trackers, ETFs in developed countries were particularly popular, followed by US ETFs. At the sector level, consumer staples, health care and energy attracted the most interest, followed by IT. Meanwhile, investors exited financials en masse last year.
The breakdown between inflows into sustainable and non-sustainable equity ETFs shows that almost EUR 32 billion flowed into ESG ETFs in 2022, and over EUR 22 billion into non-ESG ETFs. Among sustainable investors, funds invested in the Americas were more popular than those invested globally. European ETFs finished the year at spot 4, behind emerging markets at number 3.
What further stands out from the data presented is that commodity ETFs saw net wealth drain in 2022. Assets in alternatives and multi asset ETFs remained roughly flat year-on-year.
ETF flows during 2022:
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