Sustainable investments in Switzerland: Return to moderate growth

The Swiss Sustainable Investment Market Study 2024 provides an overview of sustainability-related investments in Switzerland. It lists all assets that apply sustainable investment approaches (SI approaches) and uses different perspectives on overall sustainability-related investment volumes to provide clarity on various qualities of sustainability-related investments.

The Swiss Sustainable Investment Market Study 2024 contributes to efforts to define sustainable investments by offering different perspectives, and by discussing the complexities of measuring and reporting sustainability-related investment volumes. The study highlights improved processes and transparency around investor impact. While the complexity of sustainable investing has increased, leading some market participants to be more cautious in reporting volumes, this trend reflects a positive adaptation to evolving requirements.

While discussions around what the term “sustainable investment” should stand for are still ongoing in Switzerland and the EU, the different perspectives provided in the SSF Market Study 2024 help create the necessary transparency on sustainability-related investments in the Swiss market. This year’s study therefore shows how overall sustainability-related investments are classified based on a combination of SI approaches, the definition provided in the AMAS self-regulation and the Eurosif methodology published in February 2024. Development of sustainability-related investment volumes.

Overall sustainability-related investment volumes increased from 1,610 billion to 1,660 billion Swiss francs between 2022 and 2023. After last year’s significant decline in sustainability-related investment volumes, this represents a growth rate of 3%. This increase in overall sustainability-related investments is lower than the market performance of around 15% in 2023. The likely reasons for this difference are, first, participants having improved their measurement methodologies for sustainability-related investments, leading to lower volumes being reported compared with the previous year, particularly for stewardship approaches. Second, some participants stated that they no longer report assets that only use exclusions or ESG integration as a sustainable investment approach.

Swiss Climate Scores on the rise

The report is encouraging with regard to the Swiss label for climate transparency in the financial market, which was introduced in 2022: almost half of the asset managers surveyed have already introduced the Swiss Climate Scores or plan to do so in the next 12 months.

More information:

The report: ssf-2024-ms-master-final-3.pdf (sustainablefinance.ch)

Swiss Climate Scores: Swiss Climate Scores (admin.ch)