According to a new survey by the Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing, among 1,000 active individual investors, interest in sustainable investing continues to grow steadily, especially among a younger generation of investors: Millennials, who believe that their investments can have a positive social and environmental impact.

Millennial investors tend to incorporate sustainability into their decisions. In fact, since 2014 sustainable investing has increased by more than 33%, from $6.57 trillion to almost $9 trillion.

More specifically, according to the survey:

• 86 per cent of Millennials are interested in sustainable investing  Tweet This!
• Millennial investors are twice as likely, compared to other investors, to invest in companies focused on social or environmental targets
• 89 per cent of Millennials are interested in sustainable investments that could be customized to respond to their interests and goals
• 75 per cent of Millennial investors believe that their investments may “influence the amount of climate change caused by human activities”
• 84 per cent of Millennials believe that their investment decisions may help lift people out of poverty
• 61 per cent of Millennial investors have taken at least one sustainability-related investment action over the last year
• 90 per cent of Millennial investors are interested in pursuing sustainable investments as part of their 401(k) portfolios

Audrey Choi, Chief Sustainability Officer and Chief Marketing Officer at Morgan Stanley, said that, with widespread attention to sustainability issues and objectives steadily increasing, “consumers and investors alike are now more than ever factoring sustainability issues into their investment decisions”.

References:

This article was compiled using a press release by Morgan Stanley and the publication “Sustainable Signals New Data from the Individual Investor”. For the sake of readability, we did not use brackets or ellipses but made sure that the extra or missing words did not change the press release’s meaning. If you would like to quote these written sources from the original please revert to the links below:

https://www.morganstanley.com/press-releases/morgan-stanley-survey-finds-interest-in-sustainable-investing-st

http://www.morganstanley.com/ideas/sustainable-socially-responsible-investing-millennials-drive-growth

http://www.morganstanley.com/pub/content/dam/msdotcom/ideas/sustainable-signals/pdf/Sustainable_Signals_Whitepaper.pdf

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In order to investigate investors’ attitudes towards sustainable investing (investing in companies or funds striving to achieve a positive social and/or environmental impact), identifying trends and expectations, the Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing surveyed 800 individual investors, including 200 Millennials (18- to 32-year-olds).

Key findings include:

• 71% of the individual investors surveyed were interested in sustainable investing and 65% thought sustainable investing would become more widespread in the next five years

• 84% of Millennial investors were interested in sustainable investing. More specifically, Millennial investors were:
  • almost twice more likely, compared to the rest, to invest in companies or funds striving to achieve specific social and/or environmental results
  • almost twice as likely to invest in companies or funds that used their environmental, social or governance practices to gain a competitive advantage
  • more than twice as likely to not invest in a company because of offensive business activities

• As workers and consumers, Millennial investors were:
  • almost three times more likely (compared to the rest) to choose an employer because of the employer’s approach to social and/or environmental issues
  • almost twice as likely to purchase a product based on a company’s social and/or environmental impact and check a product’s packaging using sustainability criteria

• Female investors were more interested in sustainable investing compared to male investors, were almost twice as likely to take into consideration both rate of return and a positive impact when making their investment decisions and were, also, more likely to think about sustainability in their decision making as consumers

• 45% of individual investors saw companies that integrated sustainability into their business practices as more innovative, 30% thought they attracted better talent and 72% believed such companies were capable of becoming more profitable and were better long-term investment choices

References:

This article was compiled using a paper published by the Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing. For the sake of readability, we did not use brackets or ellipses but made sure that the extra or missing words did not change the paper’s meaning. If you would like to quote these written sources from the original please revert to the link below:

https://www.morganstanley.com/sustainableinvesting/pdf/Sustainable_Signals.pdf

The post Morgan Stanley: 84% of Millennial investors interested in sustainable investing appeared first on SustainCase - Sustainability Magazine.