| ETFs change investor behaviour Our top story this week is an extensive interview with German digital wealth manager Scalable’s Jacob Hetzel who details the firm’s growth on the back of offering a wide range of ETFs, in a variety of different routes. The firm has EUR6 billion on its platform. "It is impressive how fast the business has grown," Hetzel says. "There has been a huge boom and a huge demand from German retail investors. Historically, Germany has not been a country of stock market investors, more of savers and this is changing rapidly, and we think ETFs are a crucial part of that."
ESG continues to be the leading story in investing across the board this year and this week’s newsletter has an interview with Invesco’s global head of ESG, Cathrine de Coninck-Lopez, who explains that the firm has committed to ensuring that every dollar of the USD1.5 trillion under management at the firm being managed with ESG factors integrated into every decision by 2023.
The firm has USD52.7 billion, as of June 30, 2021, in nine ESG ETFs in Europe and three ESG ETFs in the US. De Coninck-Lopez believes that ETFs have a role to play in implementing ESG in portfolios. "They are quicker to launch and systematic because they have to be with all the data that underpins them," she says, "so you can be more clear in terms of the transparency angle but that comes with the flip side which is that they can be a bit of a blunt tool."
In the US, Rockefeller-supported Impact Shares is out wielding that tool with great effect, having launched the Impact Shares MSCI Global Climate Select ETF (NYSE: NTZO) at COP26.
Esther Pan Sloane, Head of Partnerships, Policy & Communications at the UNCDF, and Ethan Powell, CEO of Impact Shares, explain that the fund was co-created by the Global Investors for Sustainable Development Alliance, a UN-convened group of leaders from the 30 largest banks, investment funds and exchanges in the world. Next product on the Impact Shares agenda is a CAT bond fund, focusing on the insurance elements behind occurrences that are influenced by increased climate volatility, such as hurricanes, fires, hail and wind damage. The product will effectively provide contemporaneous climate volatility pricing, Powell says.
And finally, we have a thorough round-up of the current crypto scene in our In My Opinion from Benjamin Dean, Director, Digital Assets, WisdomTree who explores what lies around the corner for digital assets.
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Beverly Chandler, managing editor, ETF Express
Companies in this issue
FinEx
Global X ETFs
Harbor Capital Advisors
Impact Shares
Invesco
Saturna Capital
Scalable Capital
Solactive
Tabula Investment Management
WisdomTree
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