It came during last week's conference of the Responsible Investment Association of Australasia in Auckland.

That conference was mainly noted for the release of a Stewardship Code, after two years of work.

This aims to create and preserve inter-generational value, to direct capital to where it is most needed for a resilient economy, and to bring transparency and accountability and a decarbonised economy.

The code is voluntary but will carry a lot of weight with both investors and their advisers, according to its authors.

Some supporting evidence for that view was presented to delegates at that conference, which related to managed funds.

In that area, the evidence showed responsible investment was growing twice as fast as other forms of investment.

Some of this information focused on negative or exclusionary investment decisions.

For example, people would simply not invest in tobacco, weaponry, fossil fuels and gambling to take least favoured sectors.

However, in some cases, this rate of exclusion was declining slightly, and this reflected a trend at the conference of rewarding the good guys rather than punishing the bad guys.

Speakers at the conference argued this made good business sense, and cited figures from last year showing that responsibly invested managed funds did better than the average for funds overall.

And they released new figures showing 48% of New Zealanders knew what responsible investing was and 73% of investing New Zealanders expected their money to be used ethically.

On a gender breakdown, 80% of women investors wanted to choose ethically, compared with 63% of men.

And people said they would save more if they were sure their money would be used responsibly. This trend was greatest for Generation Z, lowest for Baby Boomers.

The biggest barriers to responsible investment were a shortage of independent information and a lack of time by investors to read all the available data. Other problems were distrust about greenwashing or a lack of suitable alternatives to existing investment opportunities.