Responsible talk not enough in 2021

The FMA have made it abundantly clear that any funds claiming to take into account non-financial factors such as natural, social and human capital impacts need to back themselves up with hard evidence.

FMA director of investment management, Paul Gregory, warned providers with greenwashed funds that they “need to check their rhetoric before your investors with Facebook and Reddit accounts do it for you.

“For example, if you’ve labelled your fund ‘responsible’, what does that mean to you? Especially when other providers have also used that label, and their portfolios are quite different.

“As another example, if you claim excluding alcohol is ‘ethical’ – what are the actual ethics, the values and principles, underpinning that exclusion. Are they reflected more broadly, like in your staff and investor functions? And if they aren’t – is it truly an ethical position?”