Many clients are happy with a general risk-rated ESG fund that many of the big UK fund managers have developed. Our fund selection process for each level of risk contains several of these ESG funds anyway, so there is no compromise to be made. This is a very attractive and pragmatic proposition.
Some clients are very specific about what they want to exclude from their investments. For example, for one client pest control companies must be excluded from their portfolio because of an ethical stance towards animal welfare, whereas another person might be happy to have such a company because they have developed processes that do not harm the environment. Where clients have a strong ethical stance, we work with a specialist discretionary fund manager to build a bespoke portfolio to take their preferences into account.