Responsible goes retail: why Mint has opened the SRI tin

David Fyfe

You launched the Mint NZ equities socially responsible investment strategy as a wholesale option in 2017. Why did retail investors have to wait so long?

We established the NZ SRI Equity Fund more than three years ago. The fund was designed to meet the specific needs of the wholesale market where environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors have been an important consideration for a long time.

Our aim was to create a SRI strategy for NZ equities to institutional standards as a natural complement to the already successful Mint investment process. We had strong support as at day one from wholesale clients who were, perhaps, local leaders of the ESG movement. At launch, the responsible investment concept was only just gaining traction in the retail market, which probably wasn’t quite ready for a specialist, sophisticated SRI product at the time.

But a lot has changed since 2017. Responsible investment is now a mainstream topic, although there remains much confusion about what it actually means. Retail investors and financial advisers are, however, increasingly looking for options that address ESG issues in a fully transparent and understandable way.