ESG history

The landscape of responsible investment is changing. The term investment with environmental, social and governance criteria (ESG) is already part of the usual vocabulary of public and private investors.

While earlier it was based on the exclusion of certain types of investments, now the responsible investment takes more and more positive factors into account when deciding how and where to invest. The 2018 EUROSIF study called the “European Study on 2018 ISR” indicates that the Spanish market for sustainable and responsible investments is at a turning point, and that the filters based on exclusions and norms have been replaced by other advanced strategies like the ESG integration.

The growing importance of these new criteria is evident in many institutional levels. For example, the European Union has developed an Action Plan for Sustainable Finance that will serve as the basis for integrating environmental, social and governance criteria in the assessment of the financial risks of companies and financial entities. In this way, and increasingly, ESG criteria appear as crucial differential indicators.

The market for sustainable investments at a global level is multi-trillion in size today and has two-digit annual growths. Responsible investments are therefore a growing force in the world economy and the importance of ensuring that they don’t get “perverted” on the way is crucial.

It is very likely that in the coming years a process of homogenization of the criteria of responsibility will take place and that public regulations related to these criteria be established at European and global level to avoid conflicts of interests and promote a responsible economy. The ESG Certificate guarantees that our economy will be prepared for this challenge and will have a voice in this process.

The impulse

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