[This article originally appeared in our March issue of the ETF Report.]
Sustainable investing has its own lingo, with terms like "socially responsible," "values-based," "environmental, social and governance (ESG)" and "impact." Without knowing the definitions, it can be hard to wade through what the different terms mean and how each type of investing reaches its goals.
The good news is they're all related in some way, even if there are different permutations.
Jon Hale, director of sustainable investing at Morningstar, says while investors can make some distinctions in the different types, what it ultimately comes down to is that these funds are choosing companies based on an evaluation of their environment, social or corporate governance performance—not just financial profitability.
'Holistic Assessment'
"It's making some sort of holistic assessment of companies on that dimension in addition to the financial dimension," he added.
Although sustainable investing has its roots going back decades, for a long time, many financial advisors likely shied away from it at least in part because of a 2008 Department of Labor bulletin that frowned on using these themes to invest.
That changed in late 2015, when the agency granted permission for fiduciaries to use ESG factors when making investment decisions, says Tom Kuh, executive director of ESG Indexes at MSCI.
That ruling may assuage financial advisors' concern about looking at the space, and increases in the amount of data available from companies and third-party providers is allowing product providers to offer new investment vehicles.
Below is an explanation of the different types of sustainable investing styles and their different goals.
Socially Responsible Investing
This is an umbrella term that dates back to some of the earliest sustainable investing. It includes values-based or faith-based investing, such as funds for Catholics or Islamic-law-based funds. One of the hallmarks is screening out companies based on moral views—usually alcohol, weapons and tobacco.
The first socially responsible investments (SRI) used these exclusionary screening approaches, and they still exist to a certain extent, such as funds that screen out fossil fuels, Hale notes. It's these negative screening approaches that led some investors to think SRI has a drag on performance. Overall research shows that sustainable investing doesn't adversely affect return, but depending on the makeup of the fund, screens can at times fall out of favor.
"There's a theory around SRI investing that you're going to sacrifice performance. And if you're depending on primarily negative-screening products, like fossil fuels—think about the energy space. It's bound by the cycles of oil, cut and dried. If oil goes up, you lose; if oil is down, these products are winning," said Bob Jenkins, head of Lipper and fund research at Thomson Reuters.
With this type of values-based investing, the goal is not necessarily return.
"The nature of applying the screen on fossil fuels or Catholic institutions not owning pharma companies, the nature of those screens is they're done without reference to the potential financial implication of applying the screen," MSCI's Kuh said.
Christine Chardonnens, executive director at MSCI Index Product, says some of these products take a more sophisticated "best-in-class" approach toward screening to minimize drag from the negative screen. This approach selects the best-rated companies across sectors while screening out the worst of the companies involved in the negative business activity.
