Sustainable funds keep expanding

Article Excerpt

Both mutual funds and ETFs that employ ESG criteria in the selection of their holdings have garnered significant interest over the past years. Their global pool of mutual fund and ETF assets is now estimated at just under $2 trillion. Europe is host to most of the funds, while Canada has $14.2 billion in ESG assets spread across 156 ESG funds. The U.S. has $266 billion spread over 409 funds. The global sustainable universe attracted $185 billion U.S. in net inflows in the first quarter of 2021, up 17% from the prior quarter. In the first three months of 2021, U.S. sustainable funds saw nearly $22 billion U.S. in net inflows, more than double the inflows of the first quarter of 2020. It was also about 5 times greater than first-quarter inflows of 2019. In Canada, net ESG inflows in the first quarter of 2021 were $4.1 billion U.S., by far the largest quarterly inflow ever. In the past quarter,…