Advisors will have a new tool to keep them up to date on one of the hottest recent investing trends.

The New York-based Money Management Institute is partnering with Chicago-based Morningstar to launch the Sustainable Investing Initiative, an educational program surrounding environmental-, social- and governance-oriented (ESG) investing.

“This was a natural intersection between our strategic outlooks, and a natural fit for our asset managers who are increasingly generating solutions that are in line with the tenets of sustainable investing,” says Craig Pfeiffer, president and CEO of the Money Management Institute. “What’s happened is that there’s plenty of supply in ESG, from the development of ESG-oriented investment alternatives, and there’s plenty of demand—we know from market research that millennials and women now own a greater percentage of assets, and they’re more interested in a disciplined financial process that can make some kind of impact on the world. But there’s a lack of traction because the advisor in the middle either doesn’t fully understand ESG, or they’re not comfortable responding to questions about ESG.”

The initiative seeks to close the gap between supply and demand and help intermediaries better target their clients with information about ESG investing, says Pfeiffer.

At launch, the initiative will offer online resources and academic content for advisors and their clients. The program will use introductory courses from the CFA Institute, the Investment Management Consultants Association, the Principles for Responsible Investment Academy and US SIF: The Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment.

“Yes, there will be elements around helping an advisor construct an ESG portfolio, but that is not the intent,” says Pfeiffer. “This is more about how to introduce the ESG discussion into client relationships and how to use products and solutions that are available throughout the world, but for various reasons advisors don’t know how to engage with them.”

To offer more advanced ESG education to advisors, the initiative will engage with Concordia University’s John Molson School of Business to offer access to the Sustainable Investment Professional Certification, a credential to this date only available in Canada.

The initiative is supported by three asset managers who each made early inroads into sustainable investing and have now signed on as leadership sponsors underwriting MMI and Morningstar ESG programs: Eaton Vance affiliate Calvert Research and Management, Merrill Lynch and Northern Trust Asset Management’s FlexShares Exchange Traded Funds.

The program, at full build-out, will be a multi-channel suite of educational resources, workshops, forums and thought leadership to help advisors gain expertise in ESG investing and foster continuous learning in what Pfeiffer believes is a long-term trend.

“We don’t think it’s catching on fast enough to meet the amount of demand from consumers and the number of solutions being provided by asset managers,” says Pfeiffer. “I believe that it will persist because it’s sort of like the fiduciary discussion: We can’t go backward.” Where clients were once agnostic about incorporating environmental and social concerns into their investments, he says, they’re now more interested in incorporating values into their financial lives. “That’s another dimension of investing that’s not going to go away.”

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