Asset classes

Green and exclusion funds continue to lose cash in April

Screened funds stay positive for sales, however, but with a strong cash bias.

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Green themed and norms-based RI funds continued to lose money during April as investor confidence post Copenhagen evaporated, with the sector down by €95.9m over the month, according to the latest available figures compiled for Responsible Investor by Lipper FMI, the investment data group. The fund class, labelled by Lipper FMI as ‘RI Extended’, includes funds with multiple ethical exclusions, those following a norms-based strategy and themed climate change and microfinance funds. However, a number of funds still enjoyed strong sales. French fund manager Ofivalmo’s OFI Trésor money market fund was the best seller with inflows of €145.7m.
France’s Credit Mutuel had the second best selling fund with inflows of €55.8m. Third was Swiss fund manager, Vontobel’s environmental equities fund, Vontobel Fund-Global Trend Future Resources, with sales of €35.7m. The largest RI Extended fund remains Blackrock’s New Energy Fund with assets of €2.6bn. Pictet’s Water Fund is second with assets of €2.47bn. Pioneer’s Global Ecology fund is third with assets of just over €1bn.By contrast, sales of ‘RI screened’ funds as they are labelled by Lipper FMI, which have undergone an ‘extra-financial’ ESG (environment, social and governance) screen in their stock selection process, were up at €184.9m.
There was however, a notable shift by investors into cash funds with the top 5 sellers all money market offerings. Best seller was Allianz’s French domiciled Securicash SRI fund, which took in €170.2m. Second was Belgian fund manager Dexia’s Money Market Euro Sustainable fund with sales of €107.4m. Third was French insurer Macif’s Trésorie Semestrielle ISR fund with sales of €61.1m.
The largest RI screened fund is Amundi (the combination of Crédit Agricole Asset Management and SG Asset Management), whose LCL Monétaire fund has €2.45bn in assets.
Allianz’s Securicash SRI fund is second with €1.73bn. SAM’s sustainable water fund is third with €1.3bn.
See left hand column for download of Lipper FMI/RI fund sales stats for April