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terms of net assets and number of funds by the end of Q2 2020 52, and the second largest in the world.53 ▪ Switzerland is among the main financial centres globally as well, Zurich ranks 10 th and Geneva 14th.54 With 714 billion EUR of fund assets by the end of Q2 2020, Switzerland ranks 7 th in Europe in terms of net assets and 12 th in terms of the number of funds.55 In contrast to the studies cited above (chapter 2.1), we focused explicitly on the capital allocation effect resp. portfolio impact improvements of sustainability retail funds. As impact assessment methods we applied impact variables that are encompassing, as they consistently include impacts over entire life cycles (scope 1, 2 and 3 56) and cover all economic sectors.
3.2. Data set 3.2.1. Fund Sample The data set for this study consisted of 51 sustainability funds, their respective benchmarks and 25 conventional funds. Eleven of the sustainability funds were thematic products. The sustainability funds were selected from the 582 retail sustainability funds listed in Stüttgen & Mattman (2019), which were available for investment in Switzerland. The authors identified these 582 sustainability funds on the basis of all 9’207 retail funds available in Switzerland in 2019 with filters on ▪ secondary markets: equity, bond and real estate funds; ▪ sustainability positioning: funds that explicitly and transparently indicated to consciously pursue a sustainability concern, either by explicitly positioning themselves as sustainability funds, or by defining sustainability as a strong constitutive element of their positioning.57 For this study, we included only sustainability and conventional funds that were available in Switzerland and Luxembourg. Furthermore, we focused on equity funds with an investment focus on developed markets, i.e. we excluded bonds, real estate, money market, charity funds or mixed funds. We also excluded funds with a regional focus other than global, USA/North America or EU/EMU/Europe, e.g. we excluded funds with a focus on emerging markets. This resulted
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EFAMA 2020a. EFAMA 2020b. 54 Z/Yen 2020. 55 EFAMA 2020a. 56 Scope 1 emissions are direct GHG emissions caused by a company’s activities, e.g. emissions generated by a company’s gas boilers or vans. Scope 2 emissions are indirect GHG emissions due to the consumption of purchased electricity, steam, heat and cooling. Scope 3 emissions are indirect GHG emissions e.g. from business travel, purchased goods and services (upstream) or from the use or procession of sold products (downstream). See WRI & WBCSD 2004. 57 Stüttgen/Mattman 2019. The funds’ explicit sustainability positioning was researched based on the funds’ (self-) description. Information sources were (a) the fund titles, screened for 60 predefined sustainability-related terms such as SRI, ESG, SDG, responsible, sustainable, etc. in different languages; and (b) listings as “sustainable” by external data providers, e.g. Bloomberg, morningstar.ch, yourSRI.com; see Stüttgen & Mattman 2019. 53
INFRAS | 3 May 2021 | Summary
