Growing pains in sustainable investing by Mike Fox, Head of Sustainable Investments, Royal London Asset Management

Mike Fox (pictured below) head of Sustainable Investments at Royal London Asset Management provides his honest outlook for Sustainable Investing for 2022 and beyond.

While retaining a very positive longer-term view on sustainable investing, we expected 2021 to be a challenging year – as presaged by the performance of our sustainable funds during November 2020 as the ‘Covid-19 reopening’ trade played out. However, as of early December, the funds have had a strong 2021, although this masks periods of strong out and underperformance, rather than a consistent trend.

There are several reasons for this, but in summary we tend to favour more growth-oriented sectors and stocks (such as technology, healthcare and high-end engineering); and the long-term prospects for those companies and industries badged as ‘growth’ have accelerated due to the pandemic. Conversely, many companies and sectors regarded as value (leisure, retail, oil, etc.) have seen their prospects worsen.

Read in full: Growing pains in sustainable investing

At Ethical Offshore Investments, we have a high regard to the Sustainable Investing management skills of Mike Fox and his team at Royal London Asset Management. The Royal London Sustainable World Trust is held across our Sustainable Ethical Allocation model portfolios and the Sustainable Leaders Trust is also a recommended fund for exposure to UK equities.

And the long term performance has rewarded investors…..

1. Royal London Sustainable World Trust C Acc +13.2%pa
2. Royal London Sustainable Leaders Trust C Acc +12.2%pa
3. FTSE All Share Index +7.1%pa   

The above returns are net after management fees and dividends re-invested over the past 10 years.

Please note that this should not be conceived as individual investment advice and a recommendation to invest in the mentioned funds. Please speak to Ethical Offshore Investments (or your personal adviser) BEFORE you make any decision on investing in these funds to make sure that these investments are appropriate for your personal investment objectives.  

Clients of Ethical Offshore Investments that invest into any of the Royal London Sustainable range of funds, will not incur any additional entry fee or buy/sell spread plus we will place the trade in the lowest charging version of the fund.

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