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Recalibrating ESG ETF Express spoke with Paul Syms of Invesco this week as the firm became one of many that has updated its ESG investment policies, making index methodology changes to upgrade its ESG approach across a number of corporate bond and emerging markets ETFs.
As Syms points out, most of the recent re-calibration announcements have been in the equities markets, but here bonds have been under scrutiny. Syms says: "We first developed ESG fixed income indices with Bloomberg three years ago and at the time ESG for passive fixed income and SFDR was fairly new."
Syms comments that everyone is becoming more familiar and also more cautious, making sure everything is well defined. "If you are marketing a product it must meet those criteria that investors and regulators would expect," he says.
In the US, tax advantages of ETFs have definitely helped the extraordinary growth in assets, a difference that we can only marvel at from the perspective of Europe. Derek Hernquist of Aptus Capital Advisors spelled out exactly how those tax rules work in the US in his interview with ETF Express this week. The US has its much-celebrated in-kind tax treatment of ETFs but for those investors who are in mutual funds, tax implications lie in the mutual fund’s turnover. ETFs in the US do not need to distribute capital gains, most of the time. "I think this will continue to drive investors towards ETFs," Hernquist says. "A capital gain when your fund is up 20 per cent you can overlook but when it’s down 20 per cent, that is a tough pill to swallow."
Finally, we are pleased to announce that we are media partners with VettaFi and its next outing for its Exchange conference (Miami in February anyone?). Read the ETF Express interview with Dave Nadig, financial futurist (yes really) with the firm.
Beverly Chandler, Managing Editor
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Companies in this issue Aptus Capital Advisors Cerulli Associates Dimensional Fund Advisors DWS Invesco ProShares VanEck VettaFi | 
