So it seems that Morgan Stanley actually has an Institute for Sustainable Investing. When you have a $9 trillion market, it certainly bears further scrutiny. Sustainable (or green) investments (a/k/a "impact investing) are obviously positioned to solve environmental and social challenges and, of course, make money, although the perception according to the report that MS recently issued is that they are not as profitable as other investments. Whether or not that is correct, the market is huge and growing and spilling over into fintech, with platforms such as The Global Impact Investing Network which features over 400 investment funds in their ImpactBase and The Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment, which features a financial services directory and green mutual fund performance report. It's definitely a category to watch and play in. (Bill Taylor, CEO)
- "Millennials are driving the nearly $9 trillion sustainable investing market, according to a survey of 1,000 investors by Morgan Stanley's Institute for Sustainable Investing.
- Despite recent strides in the space, the belief that sustainable investing solutions deliver weaker returns remains prevalent.
Millennials aren't just eating avocado toast and snapchatting; they're also driving the growth of a $9 trillion market on Wall Street: sustainable investing.
Sustainable investment products, which aim to deliver outsize returns and remedy societal and environmental ills, have grown at a rate of more than 33% between 2014 and 2016 in the US, according to a newly released report by Morgan Stanley. The market for such products, as a result, has grown from $6.57 trillion to $8.72 trillion.
Morgan Stanley's "Sustainable Signals" report, a sequel to a 2015 report on the subject conducted by the bank's Institute for Sustainable Investing, examines the findings of an impact-investing-focused survey of 1,000 active investors across the age spectrum. It found that millennials have underpinned the growth of the market for impact investing and the adoption of sustainable portfolio options and other products such as green bonds and green ETFs.
Millennials "are twice as likely as the overall pool to invest in companies or funds that target social or environmental outcomes," the report said.
Millennial interest has grown since 2015. From 2015 to 2017, interest in sustainable investing grew from 84% to 86%, while those who said they were very interested in impact investing grew by 10 percentage points, to 38%...."
Full Story at BusinessInsider