The U.S. is going for socially responsible investing in a big way.
What are known as "sustainable, responsible and impact" investing assets domiciled in the U.S. have soared, increasing by 76 percent in just two years.
According to the 2014 Report on Sustainable and Responsible Investing Trends from the US SIF Foundation, "(t)he total U.S.-domiciled assets under management using SRI strategies expanded from $3.74 trillion at the start of 2012 to $6.57 trillion at the start of 2014." "These assets now account for more than one out of every six dollars under professional management in the United States," the report said.
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The foundation said it identified "$6.2 trillion in U.S.-domiciled assets at the beginning of 2014 held by 480 institutional investors, 308 money managers and 880 community investment institutions that apply various environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria in their investment analysis and portfolio selection."
It also identified $1.72 trillion held at the beginning of 2014 by 202 institutional investors or money managers that filed or co-filed shareholder resolutions on ESG issues. When "eliminating double-counting for assets involved in both strategies," the report said, it arrived at the total of $6.57 trillion.
That means, the report said, that SRI assets account for nearly 18 percent of the $36.8 trillion in total assets under management tracked by Cerulli Associates. Further, it indicates that from 1995, when the foundation first evaluated the size of the U.S. SRI market, to 2014, "the SRI universe has increased tenfold, or 929 percent, a compound annual growth rate of 13.1 percent."
Institutional investors, the report said, owned or administered a total of $4.04 trillion in assets managed with ESG factors "explicitly incorporated into investment analysis and decision-making."
Among the factors being considered by institutional investors and money managers are investment criteria related to military and weapons production, an outgrowth of the December 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School; climate change issues, which are driving such actions as fossil fuel restriction or divestment policies, as well as pressure to disclose and reduce greenhouse gas emissions; and pressure on companies to disclose their political spending.
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