Canadian SRI Assets Top $600 Billion

A new report by the Social Investment Organization shows that socially responsible investment assets in Canada rose to $600.9 billion as of the end of 2011, a 16% rise since the SIO’s last industry survey in 2010.

SRI in Canada now commands one-fifth of assets under management in the financial industry, showing a small rise from 2010 when it was 19% of the market.

"While SRI is showing that it is recovering alongside traditional investments, we believe that there is still a great deal of potential growth yet to be realized," the SIO says in the report. 

Pension fund assets accounted for $533 billion, or 89% if the total while asset management firms investing funds under SRI mandates represented about $48 billion or 8% of the total. Retail investment funds totalled $13.5 billion, about 2% of the market.

“Consistent with the findings of this report, we see steady growth in interest about responsible investment among Canadian clients and investment managers,” says Jane Ambachtsheer, a Partner with Mercer. “We expect to see more discussion of instances where environmental, social and governance inputs improve risk-adjusted returns. We encourage managers to pro-actively share such examples, as is happening in the major financial markets around the world.”

For more details, the SIO has posted its news release and the report on its recently revamped web site.