"Sustainable investing goes mainstream" was the headline run by the Wall Street Journal, the world's most famous financial daily, in January 2016. It is also the view put forward by the authors of the Primo osservatorio sul mercato e sui prodotti di finanza responsabile in Italia, presented in Milan on 18 November last by EticaNews during the Salone dello SRI. There are two reasons for this optimism.

A complete range of responsible investment products

First of all, according to analysts, the responsible finance market can be described as complete. As Luca Testoni, director of EticaNews, explains: "Until recently, an investor looking for an SRI product was faced with very few products, not necessarily suited to their risk appetite. Today that is no longer the case, since products exist for every type of strategy." This increase is captured by the data from the Forum per la finanza sostenibile, published in the latest edition of the European SRI Study.

Responsible investments deliver returns

The second aspect, no less important, is the performance of responsible finance products. Among the eight Italian asset management companies (sgr) that responded to the EticaNews survey, five show sustained growth rates: 30 and 50 per cent, and, for two of them, even triple figures. Looking instead at the 71 responsible funds that have been active in Italy for at least three years, only three failed to show a positive return. The five best performers recorded a performance rate of between 40 and 50 per cent at the end of September 2016. Focusing on the past year, among the 102 equity funds studied by EticaNews with MoneyMate, 54 posted a positive return, with the five best achieving performances of between 10 and 16 per cent. The performances of the 42 bond funds studied were also positive. Further proof that sustainability and profitability are not incompatible. Quite the contrary.

Investor interest is growing

And Italian investors? As disconnected from responsible finance as their French counterparts? Apparently not, judging by the findings of the research Prodotti SRI: il coinvolgimento consulente-cliente, based on the results of the monthly survey conducted by the Associazione nazionale promotori finanziari (Anasf) among its 600 members. In 2016, one third of advisers said they had noticed greater interest from clients in ethical finance products. This figure is corroborated by a survey by Etica Sgr, according to which 47 per cent of the Italian population would be interested in subscribing to an SRI fund. "In the retail space, there is an enormous amount of ground still to cover," comments Gian Franco Giannini Guazzugli, vice-president of Anasf. "This is an opportunity we must take into account."

Advisers call for more products and training

Against a backdrop of growing public interest, however, 24 per cent of the advisers surveyed by Anasf say they do not receive ethical products to offer from the company they work for. This figure is up on 2015 and stands in sharp contrast to the increase in SRI funds. Similarly, more than half of advisers believe that the media have not given greater coverage to sustainable finance over the past year, and that the training on offer is still lacking both in quality and quantity. "There is a need for training to enable advisers to propose SRI products to clients," concludes Gian Franco Giannini Guazzagli.