Making SRI more Accessible to the Public: We Will Need to Go through Financial Advisors
Theodore Casparian
Many people in the Sustainable & Responsible Investment Field have worked very hard to persuade corporate boards and large investors to see sustainable investing as a viable, economic choice. But in doing so, on the whole, we have left out the public. Take the limited breadth of sustainable 401(k) offerings as an example. A study by Mercer noted that “assets…remain very low where…SRI options exist” and there is “not…enough demand from participants.” I would suggest that this is because no one is sufficiently educating the public and no one is sufficiently educating those who serve the public – financial advisors and planners. Indeed, my unscientific observation is that a higher percentage of small investors (under $100,000 in assets) believe that SRI is a purely political/sub-par return choice than do large investors (over $100MM in assets.)