Annual Survey of ESG Investors and Advisors 2021 – Key preferences and market trends

We conducted a survey of ESG investors and investment advisors globally to assess their priorities and industry trends. Several stakeholders from across the globe(Americas, EMEA and APAC), representing an estimated USD12 trillion in assets under management, responded to the survey, including ESG research heads, heads of sustainable investing, senior ESG strategists, ESG fund/portfolio managers and analysts. These stakeholders represent mutual funds, insurance companies, investment banks, private equity players, commercial banks and pension funds. Most of these respondents are from the US and Europe.

The survey was aimed at getting investor perspectives on six different aspects – their preferred ESG strategies; priority ESG themes; major challenges faced in the execution of ESG research; opportunities for third-party ESG service providers; resourcing needs of global investors, together with likely approaches to managing these resourcing plans; and the use of artificial intelligence (AI)/natural language processing (NLP) technologies in ESG analytics.