Climate action for fund managers

End of Week Notes

Commit to net zero. Fund-level climate disclosure. Climate solutions funds.

The upcoming 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties, or COP26, will focus on how the world intends to address the climate crisis. To set the world on the path to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050, commitments must be made and action must be taken during this decade, not only by countries and companies, but also by asset managers.

With COP26’s focus on commitments to net zero solutions set against a backdrop of a near-constant flow of climate-related disasters and changing weather patterns, more investors will want to know how their funds are protecting their investments from climate risks and what their funds are doing to accelerate the transition to net zero. Investors of all shapes and sizes will be highly interested in how their funds are responding to the climate crisis.

Here are three concrete steps that fund managers — all asset managers really — can take to address the climate crisis:

All mutual funds and exchange-traded funds should disclose whether and how they are addressing the climate crisis. Fund investors deserve this information so they can make prudent decisions during this crucial decade. Even for asset managers that have made a net zero commitment, investors need to understand what that means for the specific funds in which they invest.

This should be a simple Statement on Climate Change that is readily accessible to all current and prospective investors. If a fund doesn’t take climate change into consideration, it should just say so. If it does, it should say how. Some funds may focus on mitigating climate risk, others on investing in climate solutions. More-comprehensive approaches may seek to do both. If an asset manager has made a net zero commitment, it should say specifically whether that commitment applies to each fund it manages.

Should this be a regulatory requirement? I don’t see why not. If company-level climate risk disclosure is going to be required, investors deserve to know whether and how funds are using that information. But, in the name of transparency and an all-hands-on-deck to a global crisis, there’s no reason why fund managers shouldn’t take the initiative on this themselves.

Just Climate has an institutional focus with large seed investors and will invest in privately held securities. But there is nothing keeping fund companies with a base of retail and smaller institutional investors from doing something similar. They could tap larger institutional investors or their own reserves for seed money while making the funds accessible to all. Standard climate-solutions funds and ETFs would have a focus on publicly traded stocks and bonds, but they can hold up to 15% of their portfolios in illiquid securities.

But that’s if investors have access to appropriate fund vehicles. Every asset manager with a fund business should consider offering a climate-solutions fund. The market would benefit from innovation and competition. Those that do so should also educate their existing investors about how to make prudent allocations to climate solutions, because answering the allocation question will be important in driving assets into these funds.

As of the end of September, the sustainable funds universe in the U.S. totaled 483 funds, which attracted $15.7 billion in net flows. It was the fourth quarter in a row in which sustainable funds surpassed $15 billion in net flows.

Flows into the broader U.S. fund market were weaker in Q3 compared to Q2, although still positive. Overall fund flows were 29% lower in Q3 compared with Q2, with inflows heavily tilted toward fixed-income funds. By contrast, sustainable fund flows held up better, dipping by only 12% in Q3 compared with Q2. And that’s despite the relatively low number of sustainable fixed-income funds to absorb investor preferences for greater fixed-income exposure. Sustainable equity funds, in other words, continued to draw healthy flows during a quarter when equity was out of favor.

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