Giving Compass' Take:

• This TriplePundit post reviews 2018 through the lens of sustainable investing, arguing that such practices are beginning to bear fruit and could augur a new era of growth in the field.

• What were some of the obstacles impact investors faced this year and in the past? How might portfolios expand in 2019 to include more sustainable assets — and what would they look like?

• Here's more on philanthropy’s unique role in impact investing.


On October 23, 2018, the Financial Times published an article stating that Larry Fink, CEO of the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, had announced that “sustainable investing will be a core component for how everyone invests in the future.” He further explained that sustainable investing did not lead to lower returns and that in his own opinion such a strategy will lead to higher returns.

The news story was of particular interest to me for two reasons. First, there was the fact that my field, so long considered a tiny outlier in the field of finance, had survived to become the declared future of financial asset management by someone whose efforts to build my field were not notable a decade ago. Second, was the use of “Sustainable Investing” rather than “Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG),” which most big banks and asset managers are more comfortable using.

In my opinion, Mr. Fink’s statement means that we early advocates have convinced the world of the need for adding “people and the planet” into our way of investing, and it means that the world’s most conventional asset manager doesn’t need an academic catch phrase to hide behind. Larry Fink is okay with saying the word sustainability. Simply acknowledging that making money at the cost of losing our planet is unsustainable is an extraordinary step forward for the masters of Wall Street.

Read the full article about the year of Wall Street's sustainable investing by Amy Domini at TriplePundit.