Characteristics of Sustainable Spanish CISs in 2020

This paper is an initial attempt to understand the sustainable Spanish CISs registered with the CNMV at the end of 2020 in more depth. At that time, there were very few of these, just 59, divided between investment funds and open-ended collective investment companies (SICAVs), with assets of around 9.5 billion euros. These CISs voluntarily refer to their activity as SRI (socially responsible investment), in accordance with Inverco’s 2014 SRI Circular. The first part of this study shows that sustainable CIS average returns at the end of 2020 exceeded those of the investment funds (IFs) and SICAVs registered with the CNMV (1.8% compared to 0.8%). At the same time, the ratio of expenses was higher for CISs with ESG objectives than for other CISs (1.22% compared to 1.05%). In relation to ESG evaluations of the issuers of the assets belonging to sustainable CIS portfolios, we show that they are invested in issuers with an excellent or good ESG rating and a degree of publicly reported ESG data transparency that is high or above average (ratings A and B)