Closer to home, a CFA study revealed there is a significant appetite for ESG investing in the UAE, the second-largest economy of the Middle East. The survey revealed that 94 per cent of retail investors in the UAE were interested in or using ESG in 2020, up from 90 per cent in 2018. Globally, ESG assets now account for about one-third of all investments.
“Partly, this is a result of the way that the pandemic rocked working patterns and changed beliefs about the relationships between people, corporations and governments,” Zainab Kufaishi, head of Middle East and Africa at Invesco, says.
At the beginning of the pandemic, many wondered whether ESG issues would tumble down the list of investor priorities as the crisis sparked a sharp sell-off and market volatility in March. However, Sustainalytics latest research underscores that the majority of ESG investments have outperformed their non-sustainable counterparts this year and have had overall lower volatility.