Professional investors are willing to sacrifice 2.4% of their returns each year if it means investments have a positive impact on issues such as climate, it is claimed.
Some were even prepared to forgo as much as 5% annually, said NN Investment Partners (NNIP).
The research found that just over half of the 290 professional investors still saw environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing as likely to lead to lower returns.
Jeroen Bos, head of specialized equities and responsible investing at NNIP, said: “While it is great to see that investors are prepared to give up a proportion of their returns to contribute to a more sustainable world, research actually shows that ESG integration does not automatically lead to lower returns.
“For example, a [NNIP and Yale University] metastudy incorporating the conclusions from around 2,200 academic studies conducted between the early 1970s and 2014, revealed a positive relationship between corporate ESG scores and financial performance in the majority of cases (63%).”
The survey also revealed German (80%), Italian (75%) and Dutch (71%) investors appeared to be the most pessimistic about the return potential of responsible investment strategies, while French (26%) and Belgian (27%) investors were far less negative about responsible investing requiring them to compromise on financial returns.
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