More Choices for Investing in Sustainable Funds, says Morningstar

A new report by Morningstar covers the landscape of sustainable investment products and notes the rapid growth in the sector. According to the report, there are 235 sustainable funds available to U.S. fund investors. The author writes that 40 sustainable funds were launched in 2017, and 36 were launched in 2016; and after two years of record flows, these funds have nearly $100 billion in assets. The report commends sustainable funds on their performance, finding that as a group they performed better than the overall fund universe in 2017 and performed well over the last three calendar years. The report also finds that while sustainable funds are generally competitive on expenses, they tend to be more expensive than index products that are currently popular with investors. Further, many of the funds have not yet built a large asset base or 3-year performance track record -- 102 funds are less than three years old and 100 mostly overlapping funds have less than $50 million in assets.