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Financial risk and return may be the main focus of most investments. But strategies with an explicit social component are growing rapidly, according to the most current data from the industry association that supports and tracks this field: US SIF — the Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment.
Investment funds incorporating environmental, social and corporate governance criteria in their decisions had net assets of $1 trillion in 2012, up from $202 billion in 2007, according to US SIF. That was the value of such investments in mutual funds, annuity funds, closed-end funds, exchange-traded funds, alternative investment funds and other pooled products.
Within this universe, the number of funds deemed as S.R.I.’s, or sustainable and responsible investments, surged to 720 in 2012 from 260 in 2007.
Meg Voorhes, director of research and operations at US SIF, said S.R.I.’s were growing “across a variety of asset classes like mutual funds and hedge funds starting to incorporate S.R.I. strategies while existing S.R.I.’s are also getting bigger.â€
Of course, what qualifies as sustainable and responsible for one person may be objectionable for another. A fund would be included in the organization’s sustainable-and-responsible category if it incorporated a single one of 30 criteria — avoiding investment in Sudan, for example, because of objections to policies of the current government there. Another fund might appear on the list if it avoided investments in the tobacco, alcohol or pornography industries.
While $1 trillion is hardly small change, it’s a tiny fraction of total assets in investment funds in the United States. The mutual fund industry alone, for instance, had $13 trillion in net assets in 2012. Still, while most funds aren’t basing their decisions on such criteria, there are plenty of investment choices for people who do.
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