ESG Research Update

ESG Research

Sustainable investments still outperforming

Responsible investments are overall continuing to do better than the general market, a new report from the Responsible Investment Association Australasia (RIAA) shows. The report, COVID-19 and the performance of responsible investments (PDF), discusses how during the huge market disruptions seen during the pandemic, that responsible funds using ESG factors are outperforming their regular peers.

The report says companies or assets aren’t likely to do well if they ignore ESG and other ethical issues. This report is in line with other research comparing ESG funds with their regular market peers. MSCI conducted a comparison of its ESG indexes compared to its parent indexes for the first quarter of 2020, find the ESG indexes ‘comprehensively’ outperformed their parents MSCI index.

AXA Investment Managers performed an analysis of the performance of leading ESG companies in the first quarter of 2020 compared to those lagging behind, saying that companies with the highest ESG ratings have proved more resilient in the coronavirus market crash than those with the lowest.